LIBRARY OF
WELLES LEY COLLEGE
FROM THE FUND OF
EBEN NORTON HOR5FORD
/
STUDIES IN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
AN ACCOUNT OF TWENTY-SEVEN CONCRETE
CASES PRECEDED BY A THEORETICAL EXPOSI-
TION. COMPRISING LECTURES DELIVERED IN
GENEVA AT THE JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
INSTITUTE AND AT THE FACULTY OF LET-
TERS IN THE UNIVERSITY
BY
CHARLES BAUDOUIN
Author of Suggestion and Autosuggestion, etc., «tc.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL
8605
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922
Copyright, 1922,
By DODD, mead AND COMPANY, Inc.
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PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
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BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
TO
PIERRE BOVET & EDOUARD CLAPAREDE
OF GENEVA UNIVERSITY
AS A TOKEN OF ADMIRATION, FRIENDSHIP,
AND GRATITUDE
To explore the unconscious, to dig into the subsoil of the
mind bj' specially designed methods, such will be the main
task of psychology during the twentieth century. I am
confident that this will lead to great discoveries, no less
important, perhaps, than those made during the nineteenth
century in the realms of physical science and natural his-
tory.— Henri Bergson, 1901c
By stressing the dynamic aspect of subconscious phe-
nomena, psychoanalysis becomes a vivifying ferment for
psychology. Experimental psychology, while devoting it-
self to elucidating the machinery of mental processes, has
almost entirely forgotten the study of the causes that set
this machinery in motion. Psychoanalysis aims at discov-
ering and describing these hidden springs. The work of
Sigmund Freud, through the novelty of the ideas it sug-
gests, and through its fertilising influence, has become one
of the most important events in the whole history of the
science of the mind. — Edouard Claparéde, 1920.
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
Psychoanalysis is tersely defined by Edward Jones
as ^Hhe study of unconscious mentation*' (Papers on
Psychoanalysis, p. 2). Crichton Miller writes (The
New Psychology and the Teacher, p. 135) : '*Tlie aim
of psychoanalysis ... is to reveal to tlie individual,
from his o\\ti experience, the unconscious motive that
is at work in producing his neuroses.'' Charles
Baudouin, we think, would accept both the definition
and the statement of aim; but he would certainly
stress the view that psychoanalysis has to deal with
the normal more than with the pathological, that it
is to be looked upon as a method of re-education
rather than as a curative method. He takes, of
course, the same view of autosuggestion. His desire
is to coordinate the essentials of intuitionism (the
Bergsonian doctrine considered apart from all meta-
physics), the teachings of the New Nancy School,
and the theories of psychoanalysis, as contributions
to educational science, psychology, and philosophy.
The present volume, therefore, consists of studies in
psychoanalysis from this outlook, though incident-
ally we find in it valuable therapeutic applications
of the study of subconscious mentation.
We begin this preface by defining psychoanalysis,
because it is a term which has hardly found its way
into the most modern dictionaries, and because it is
viu TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
one used by many persons who have no more than
the vaguest idea of its meaning. Before going on
to a brief account of the analytic m_ethod, we wish
to say a few words concerning the unconscious — or,
as Baudouin prefers to call it, the subconscious.
Even to-day there are many facile critics ready to
say that you cannot study unconscious mentation
because you cannot study a contradiction in terms
or a non-existent entity. Nevertheless the subcon-
scious is just as **reaP' as any other intangible
entity we have to postulate for the intelligible pre-
sentation of experience. Bertrand Russell shows in
The Analysis of Mind that the concept '^conscious-
ness" is itself less simple and obvious than most
people are apt to imagine. Certainly to those who
read Baudouin 's book with an open mind it will
soon become apparent that the inferential datum,
subconscious, is no less real than the immediate
datum, consciousness. Let us put the matter in the
more concrete phrases of '* behaviourist'' psy-
chology. A great deal of human behaviour remains
incomprehensible so long as we try to explain it as
the outcome of the consciousness of which the doer
is aware. Yet it becomes perfectly comprehensible
when we realise that it is the outcome of something
closely akin to consciousness, but of which the doer
is unaware. This something-akin-to-consciousness-
of -which -the-doer-is-unaware-and- which -detemdnes-
behaviour, determines also thoughts and feelings,
including the thoughts and feelings both of health
and of disease. For short, we call it the subcon-
scious or the unconscious.
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE ix
Whilst the individual unconscious is anathema to
many, the '^collective unconscious'^ of the school of
Jung is itself anathema to analysts of the school of
Freud, who regard the later developments of Jung's
teaching as the aberrations of a mystic. Even
Baudouin, who uses the term, is careful in most in-
stances to enclose it in inverted commas. Objectors
have unquestionable warrant for maintaining that
there is no such thing as a collective unconscious, any
more than strictly speaking there is a '^ collective con-
sciousness,'' or any more than there can be a ''mass
of suffering." We are individuals, and each one of
us thinks and suffers alone. But we are likewise
gregarious beings, and this fact may plausibly be
considered to endow the "collective unconscious"
with a conceptual reality, though at a more abstract
remove than the individual unconscious. Thus, just
as the term "collective consciousness" is used, with
no mystical significance whatever, to denote a con-
sciousness which is supposed to be practically iden-
tical in a very large number of minds, so the term
"collective unconscious" is applied to unconscious
mentation of the same character. But the idea of
the "collective unconscious" does not play any con-
siderable part in Baudouin 's studies. He is mainly
concerned with the investigation of the individual
unconscious. Two-thirds of his book consist of an
account of twenty-seven concrete cases examined by
the analytic method.
Baudouin 's procedure for the study of subcon-
scious mentation does not differ from that of the
X TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
Freudian school of psychoanalysts. But he leaves
his readers to infer the details. Moreover, in this
country at any rate, such hazy ideas still prevail as
to the nature of the analytic method that a brief ex-
position of its details seems appropriate.
With Baudouin, as with Freud, the interpretation
of dreams provides the most important clue to the
working of the unconscious. Of great importance,
too, is the analysis and interpretation of day-dreams
(cf. Varendonck, The Psychology of Bay-Breams),
In Baudouin 's terminology, the common element in
dreams and day-dreams is to be found in the ** out-
cropping of the subconscious" (see Suggestion and
Autosuggestion, Part II, Chapters Two and Three).
Reminiscences, especially reminiscences of childhood,
have also to be dealt with ; these reminiscences often
seem trivial, but the significant point is apt to be
this — that among the myriads of trivial experiences,
certain trivialities are remembered. Of great, per-
haps of equal significance, is the ** remembrance "
of pseudo-reminiscences, the existence of *^ memo-
ries'' which seem real to the subject's consciousness
until their veridical reality is dispelled by the work
of psychoanalysis.
Dreams, of course, are to a great extent symbolic,
and in this connection Freud remarks (Introductory
Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 157) that it is a per-
nicious error to ^* think that the translating of the
symbols is the ideal method of interpretation and
that you would like to discard that of free associa-
tion." The analysis has to be pursued by asking
the subject for associations to the main items in the
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE xî
dream, the day-dream, or the reminiscence (see
Grlossary, association, etc.). Every dream, perhaps
every day-dream and every reminiscence, has, or
may have, a latent content as well as a manifest con-
tent. The latent content is what the analyst has to
discover if he is to * interpret" the dream, and thns
to make the subject aware of the trends of his own
unconscious. To quote Freud once more (op. cit.,
p. 143) : *^You will make use of the two comple-
mentary methods: you will call up the dreamer's
associations till you have penetrated from the sub-
stitute to the thought proper for which it stands;
and you will supply the meaning of the symbols
from you own knowledge."
One point of the utmost importance in the tech-
nique is the condition of the subject when the analyst
is demanding associations. Freud writes (op. cit.,
p. 88) : *^When I ask a man to say what comes to
his mind about any given element in a dream, I re-
quire him to give himself up to the process of free
association which follows when he keeps in mind
the original idea. This necessitates a peculiar atti-
tude of the attention, something quite different from
reflection, indeed, precluding it. ' ' The reader should
note that this is only another way of describing
what Baudouin terms ^^ contention,'' i.e., **the psy-
chological equivalent of attention, minus effort. ' ' It
is also akin to ^^spontaneous attention" (interest)
as contrasted with '* reflective attention." But, qua
contention, it is, according to Baudouin, preemi-
nently the state of mind requisite for the ** outcrop-
ping of the subconscious" (see Glossary).
xîi TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
When Freud says tliat the analyst will snpply the
meaning of dream symbols from his own knowledge,
he is far from implying that the interpretation of
the symbols is an arbitrary affair. Just as in the
use of the microscope the power to interpret the
visual images is attained only by long experience,
and by collating the microscopist's personal experi-
ence with that of others, so here. Consider, more-
over, the use of language. In this matter we are all
familiar with the symbolism that is obvious and de-
liberate, the symbolism known as metaphor. But
iBvery student of linguistic science knows further
that language is full of hidden symbolisms, is packed
with symbols whose significance has been forgotten.
There is no hard and fast line between such sym-
bolism and the symbolism of dreams, the symbolism
whose meaning is veiled from consciousness until
revealed by psychoanalysis. Now one of the most
notable of Baudouin 's contributions to analytical
science, and a matter upon which he differs from
the Freudian school, is his careful study of conden-
sation (see Glossary) in its bearing upon represen-
tation by symbols. The Freudians regard symboli-
sation (in dreams) as the means whereby the work-
ings of the unconscious are veiled from the conscious
mind. But Baudouin writes (p. 27): ''Condensa-
tion ... is the first stage in the creation of the
symbol. I look upon symbolisation as a general law
of the imagination, and not as being necessarily the
outcome of the masking of forbidden représenta^
tions. ' '
The teaching epitomised in the foregoing quota-
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE xiii
tion serves, like nmch that Baudouin writes, to bridge
the gulf between the Freudian enthusiasts and those
who dissent from Freudian theories and interpreta-
tions. Mary Amold-Forster, in Studies in Dreams,
writes (p. 112) : **My experience convinces me that
it is not true to state that all dreams are symbolic,
any more than we can accept as of universal truth
the Freudian theory that they are all symbols of
repressed desire/' Nevertheless, it is doubtful if
there are any dreams free from condensation, as
Baudouin defines it. Passing to the second criticism,
we think Baudouin would agree that not all dreams
are ** Freudian dreams." Probably everyone has such
dreams inter alia. But it is the ** Freudian dreams"
that serve as grist for the psychoanalytic mill — and
psychoanalysts are no more free than lesser mortals
from the tendency to count the hits and ignore the
misses. Hence their belief that all dreams are
** Freudian dreams." Baudouin, however, nowhere
commits himself to such an assertion. We believe
he would accept the main conclusions of Mary
Amold-Forster, whose fascinating volume should be
read by all interested in dream life and in the pos-
sibilities of regulating dreams by autosuggestion.
Her theories and methods square with Baudouin 's
own teaching anent the control of the subconscious.
This brief account of the psychoanalytic method
has not been given to enable amateurs to begin the
practice of psychoanalysis upon their friends and
relations, nor even to enable them to undertake the
first steps in the exceedingly difficult art of auto-
xiv TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
psychoanalysis. It lias been given to make it easy
for tlie beginner to read Baudouin 's book, because he
will have grasped certain essentials of technique at
the very outset. Though it was not primarily writ-
ten for the beginner, we regard Studies in Psyclio-
analysis as perhaps the best work for the beginner
hitherto published. We consider it better for this
purpose than Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psy-
choanalysis, which has recently been made available
in English. The study of Freud should come after
that of Baudouin, not before. Having read these
two volumes, the reader may usefully turn to Jung's
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology , and to
his Psychology of the Unconscious^ as authoritative
expositions of the teachings of the Zurich School.
His mind thus enlarged, the student will return with
delight to the clarity of what is destined to become
known as the Geneva School, and will read the
Studies again and again. For, heartily as we may
share Freud's ** dislike for simplification at the ex-
pense of truth" (op. cit., p. 238), there is much jus-
tice in Baudouin 's complaint (infra, p. 22) that:
**The realm of the * unconscious' is necessarily ob-
scure ; but the psychoanalysts would seem at times to
have taken a positive delight in peopling it with
shadows."
To the graduate in analytical literature we would
not impertinently offer any hints as to how to read
this book. But to novices in the field, and in espe-
cial to those who open the Studies in Psychoanalysis
solely because they have known and valued the
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE xy
author's Suggestion and Autosuggestion, we venture
to say : Do not, at a first reading, trouble mucli about
the Theoretical Part. This is written mainly for
experts, is of import to them, and will interest them
greatly even when they differ from the author. But,
if you are a beginner, when you have finished the
General Survey, go straight to the Case Histories.
Eead them in the light of what has been said above
about method and with the aid of the Glossary.
Thereby you will be able to enjoy a course of Psy-
choanalysis without Tears, and will then find your-
self in a position to master the Theoretical Part with
the smallest modicum of difficulty. Such, it will be
noted, has been the author's own path of approach.
He has worked by the inductive method. In the
Case Kecords he is feeling his way and gaining his
experience from day to day. The Theoretical Part
represents his conclusions at the date of writing.
The beginner will enjoy, and even the expert who
is not a hard-shelled adherent of one of the rival
schools will value, the concreteness of treatment, and
the gradual initiation into psychoanalytical ideas by
the inductive method. The practice of many psycho-
analyst writers has rather been to attempt a blud-
geoning of the acolyte. (We do not talk of their
patients, but of the readers of their books!) They
take cock-shies at us with the Oedipus complex, say-
ing: **You wanted to kill your father in order to take
his place with your mother — that's the kind of beast
you are!" They rub our noses in it! But Charles
Baudouin gently leads us on to discover our less
amiable peculiarities for ourselves. He suggests,
xvi TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
perhaps, but he does not insist. He attempts no
more than to make us realise that '* everything hap-
pens as if '' so and so were the case. In fact Baudouin
treats us as the gentle psychoanalyst treats patients,
and not as the rough psychoanalyst treats readers.
He thus avoids prematurely applying to certain fun-
damental complexes the somewhat brutal handling
which has made many persons needlessly hostile to
psychoanalysis.
We now come to the feature of Baudouin 's book
which will most effectively disturb the complexes of
many psychoanalysts. We refer to what the author
terms the **mixed method,'' the coupling of psycho-
analysis with suggestion. ** Psychoanalysis," writes
Baudouin (p. 31), ^4s incompatible with certain
forms of suggestion; but it is perfectly compatible
with others. I regard the intolerance which some
analysts display towards suggestion as no less de-
plorable than the sceptical attitude of practitioners
of suggestion towards analysis. " It is in the latter
respect that Baudouin takes a different road from
Coue, to whom suggestion unaided seems an all-suf-
ficient therapeutic method. The deliberately con-
joined use of suggestion and psychoanalysis is
Baudouin 's contribution as a pioneer in the field of
therapy. But an attentive reader of the Studies will
soon realise that the author's dominant interest in
psychoanalysis lies in the application of the method
to the realm of art. This will be the topic of
Baudouin 's forthcoming volume Psychoanalysis and
esthetics. The hostility of certain analysts towards
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE xvii
suggestion leads sometimes to a ^^ censorship'' of the
very word. A noted German pyehoanalyst, whose
** orthodoxy" no one would dispute, congratulates
himself on the disappearance of morbid troubles
when, in addition to analytical treatment, a continu-
ous process of * incitation" (Aneiferung) is em-
ployed by the physician. This pundit was reading
a paper to a psychoanalytical circle, and he would
not sully his hearers' ears with the obscene word
*' suggestion"! Freud himself is less fastidious.
Baudouin quotes (infra, p. Ill) a liberal utterance
concerning suggestive therapeutics; and on p. 380
of the Introductory Lectures we read that in the
later stages of the analysis the neurotic patient's
internal conflict is **by means of the analyst's sug-
gestions lifted to the surface, to the higher mental
levels, and is there worked out as a normal mental
conflict." Again, on p. 381, he speaks of *' changes
in the ego ensuing as a consequence of the analyst's
suggestions." Nevertheless, from the seven pages
which, in his Introductory Lectures, Freud devotes
to the topic of suggestion, we can only gather that
his natural devotion to psychoanalysis has led him
to ignore the latest developments of suggestive ther-
apy. He was certainly unaware, at the date of these
lectures (delivered in 1915 and 1917), of the theory
and practice of autosuggestion as expounded in Sug-
gestion and Auto suggestion J or he would not lay the
stress he does on **the problem of the nature and
source of one's suggestive authority." The point
cannot be argued here. The Studies will have to
fight its own battle with the Freudians. Suffice it to
xviii TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
quote Baudouin 's pragmatic conclusion (p. 31) :
*^The method to which experience has led me, the
method whose results are recorded in this book, is
founded upon an unceasing collaboration between
autosuggestion and psychoanalysis. Many, I know,
regard this as a heresy. Whether it be heretical or
not, I am confident that immense advantage can be
derived from such collaboration.'' Readers must
not, however, expect to find in the present work more
than passing references to autosuggestion. Upon
that topic the author has delivered his message in
the earlier volume. But the translators may ven-
ture to make a point which Baudouin has omitted to
make for himself. Attentive students of Chapter
Twelve, **The Search for a Guide," will come to
realise that autosuggestion must owe a large part
of its power and its extraordinary vogue to the fact
that it enables those who practise it to find within
themselves the guide of whom they are in search,
and enables them in many instances to free them-
selves from fixations without recourse to the aid of
the psychoanalyst.
Jung, says Crichton Miller (op. cit., p. 203),
** wants to build for the future." Freud, impatient
of large and vague generalisations, and sedulous to
perfect and keep immaculate a rather narrow tech-
nique, speaks regretfully of the days when Jung
**was a mere psychoanalyst and did not aspire to be
a prophet." Baudouin, less ambitious than Jung,
but more ambitious than Freud, strives to collate
the new psychology with the old, but also reaches
out towards the future. He writes (p. 28); '*The
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE xix
intelligence ensures our adaptation to the real; the
imagination ensures the adaptation of the real to
ourselves.'^ Neither task can be adequately achieved
without perfecting our knowledge of the subcon-
scious. In a somewhat different sense from that in
which the phrase is used by Freud (op. cit., p. 163)
most readers of the Studies will feel of psychoanal-
ysis that ^4f you give it your little finger it will
soon have your whole hand.'* Immense is the fas-
cination of a research that is destined to produce
as great a change in man's life as was caused by the
discovery of articulate speech, a greater change
than was caused by the invention of writing or print-
ing. *^The study of abnormal psychology — includ-
ing its variant produced by artifice — has thrown
more light on the workings of the normal mind than
all the centuries of academic study of the latter.''
Thus writes Morton Prince in his foreword to
Arnold-Forster's work on dreams. May we not
hope that man, the tool-using animal, is on the eve
of learning how to use the most stupendous of all
tools — his own mind?
EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL.
London, July, 1922.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. GENERAL SURVEY
tact;
vii
1. The two Gradations of Psychoanalysis . 1
2. Guiding Principles of the present Work 10
PART ONE: THEORETICAL EXPOSITION
n. SKETCH OF AN AFFECTIVE THEORY OF THE ASSO-
CIATION OF IDEAS 25
1. From Associationism to Psychpanalysis . 25
2. The Laws of affective Association . . 33
3. Dreaming and Action .... 53
m. DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE, AND THE
EVOLUTION OF INSTINCTS 67
1. The Function of the Dream. — ^Dreaming
and Play 67
2. The Idea of an Evolution of Instinct . 82
3. The Genealogy of Tendencies ... 96
IV. MIXED METHOD: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGES-
TION . . 121
1. Contrast 121
2. Conciliation 127
xxi
xxiî TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART TWO: CASE HISTORIES
CHAPTER PAGE
V. CHILDREN 147
1. Linette: Dreams of forbidden Pleasures.
Fixation upon the Mother . . . 149
2. Mireille : Fixation upon the Mother. Re-
fusal of the feminine Rôle . . .171
3. Robert: A Schoolboy's Feelings about
School. Introversion (Analysis of a
School Essay) 181
4. Jean: Protest against the Father (Anal-
ysis of a School Essay) .... 186
VI. THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 190
1. Raoul : Budding Virility. The feeling of
Constraint 192
2. Kitty: A young Girl's Passion for a
Woman 195
3. Grerard: Vacillating Sublimation. A
State of Conflict 206
Vn. ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS . . . .219
1. Miriam: A religious and social Calling
inspired by the Cult of the Father. A
State of Conflict 221
2. Marcel : Dread of the Father. Timidity
and undue Scrupulosity . . . 231
3. Otto: Repressed Virility. Awkwardness
and Constraint. A philosophic Trend 242
Vin. THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION AND THE
INSTINCT FOR MOTHERHOOD .... 266
TABLE OF CONTENTS xxiii
CHAPTER PAGE
1. Autopsy choanalysis. Dreams during an
Attack of pulmonary Tuberculosis . 268
2. Yvonne: Fears concerning Childbirth . 282
3. Renée: Refusal of Femininity and of
Motherhood 284
4. Martha : Longing for Motherhood. Men-
strual Irregularity 292
IX. TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 294
1. Alexander : Anxiety States . . .296
2. Roger: Psyehasthenia. Impotence . . 321
3. Germaine: Spasm of the Eyelid. Fussy
Activity . 339
X. MENTAL DISORDERS 350
1. Bertha: Introversion. Delusions of Per-
secution. Neuralgia .... 352
2. Ruth: A fixed Idea. Impressions of
Rape 362
3. George: Mental Aberrations in an Epi-
leptic .367
XI. SUBLIMATIONS 377
1. Alfred: Stammering. Maladaptation to
social Life. A Taste for Music . . 379
2. Ida : Sexual Shock at Puberty. Maniacal
Disturbances, esthetic Sublimation . 383
3. Adam : Sublimation in Danger . . . 388
4. Jeanne: Non- Acceptance of Marriage.
Thwarted Maternal Instinct. Vacil-
lating Sublimation 393
xxiv TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
5. Queenie: Fixation upon the Father.
esthetic and religious Sublimation . 410
Xn. THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 421
1. Rynaldo: Change of Analyst. From
Hostility to Sympathy .... 422
2. Stella: Sublimation of the Idea of the
Guide 448
GLOSSARY 461
BIBLIOGRAPHY 475
INDEX 485
STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
STUDIES IN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL SURVEY
1, The two Categories of Psychoanalysis
Almost the only book by means of which readers of
the French tongue can gain a knowledge of the prin-
ciples of psychoanalysis is Kégis and Hesnard's
faithful exposition of Freudian theory/ This work
should be read by all students of physoanalytical
theory. In the present study, I write from an en-
tirely different point of view. My primary aim has
been to expound psychoanalysis as concretely as pos-
sible, by the record of a number of cases analysed
by myself. As far as concerns the theory upon
which the practice is based, this cannot be purely
and simply Freudian, for I have also assimilated the
ideas of other psychologists, such as Adler, Jung,
and Flournoy ; and, furthermore, my theoretical out-
look has necessarily been modified by the data, how-
ever slender, of my own experience. Thus I make
no claim to do over again the theoretical work which
^ Régis and Hesnard, La Psychoanalyse des Névroses et des
Psychoses, 1914.
1
2 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
has been so ably done by Kegis and Hesnard; my
book is not a study of the authorities. I approach
the problem from the other side, where it is con-
crete and individual.
These considerations will explain one of the diffi-
culties of compiling the volume; they will account
for what may be regarded as its defects. My aim
has been to produce a record of my own work which
might interest experts, not to write a popular
treatise for beginners. On the other hand, I was
writing for French readers, most of whom are in
fact beginners in this subject. Consequently it was
incumbent on me to deal with general principles,
many of which are trite matters for the expert.
Have I been clear enough to be comprehensible to
the general reader; have I been concise enough to
escape being tedious to the expert? I do not know.
But I am not without hope that the way in which
I have had to write my book will prove to have been
an advantage after all. I believe that a theoretical
discussion of the general principles of psychoanal-
ysis is eminently desirable, even though such an
examination may be considered superfluous by cer-
tain psychoanalysts, extremists of their school.
There is good reason for surprise that a thought
trend so notable both in quality and in quantity
should still be little known in France. Freud's most
imporJ:ant work, Traumdeutung,'^ has never been
translated into French. There is a great contrast,
in this respect, between France and the English-
* See complete bibliography at end of volume.
GENERAL SURVEY 3
speaking lands. Traumdeutung was translated into
English in 1913, and psychoanalysis has now be-
come a household word in Britain and the United
States. Works on philosophy, various aspects of
science, and even popular science, have been writ-
ten by persons who have made the new outlook their
own/ To return to France, the neglect of psycho-
analysis in this country is readily explicable — quite
apart from the war. Nor are all the reasons wholly
discreditable to French thought.
A regretable indiiference, routinism and paro-
chialism, have doubtless played their part. But the
psychoanalysts are not free from blame. The realm
of the ^'unconscious'' is necessarily obscure; but
they would seem at times to have taken a positive
delight in peopling it with shadows. They have
been neologist to excess ; some of their theories are
fantastically bold; not a few of the exponents are
fanatics. These characteristics of the new doctrine
were naturally repugnant to the French mind, which,
^ A few instances maj^ be given. Philosophy : W. H. R. Rivers,
Mind and Medicine, 2nd éd., 1920 ; Bertrand Russell, The Analysis
of Mind, 1921. Psychology : A. G. Tausley, The New Psychology
and its Relation to Life, new edition, 1922 (this work is directly
inspired by psychoanalysis) ; Anonymous (The Plebs League),
An Outline of Psychology, 1922 (this exposition of psychology
for working'-class students is likewise permeated with psycho-
analytical theory) ; Millais Culpin, Spiritualism and the New
Psychology. Sociology: W. M. Gallichan, The Psychology of
Man-iage, 1917 (it is significant that on p. 64 the author de-
scribes C. G. Jung as "one of the greatest psychologists of our
day") ; Eden and Cedar Paul, Creative Revolution, 1920 (these
writers lay especial stress on "the new lights Freudianism sheds
upon the problems of revolutionary communism"). The list
might be gxeatly extended.
4 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
loves clarity and good sense and is humorously scep-
tical. Psychoanalysts have occasionaly done their
best to justify Nietzsche's aphorism: ^*The German
spirit is a form of indigestion." They would ap-
pear, too, to have found it pleasing to break down
all the bridges connecting their ^*new science'' with
the psychology of yesterday. Like Christopher
Columbus they have discovered a new world, have
thereupon renounced allegiance to the old, and have
even been inclined to deny the existence of the old.
We ought not to break down these bridges, but
rather to strengthen them. Where could such work
be more successfully carried on than at Geneva, the
meeting-place of two cultures? We have to thank
the late Théodore Flournoy for having guided our
footsteps in this direction, for having sought out the
points of contact between the psychology of William
James and the psychology of Sigmund Freud, and
between their respective terminologies. Flournoy 's
Une mystique moderne is a model of that scientific
tolerance which is less common than people are apt
to suppose. The Genevese group of psychoanalysts
is guided in the same spirit by Edouard Claparède ;
this spirit likewise animates Pierre Bovet's remark-
able study L'instinct combatif. I wish to take this
opportunity of expressing my indebtedness to all
these colleagues.
Such originality as the present work possesses
will, then, be due to a search for points of contact
between psychoanalysis and ordinary psychology.
These points of contact must be found if the science
GENERAL SURVEY 5
of the subconscious is to be made assimilable.
Claparède holds that it does not suffice to translate
psychoanalysts' writings into French. He considers
that as far as may be, we ought also to translate
their thought, their terminology, their very theories,
into forms more familiar to French minds and to
non-Freudian psychologists. Unquestionably, an
unmodified exposition of the psychoanalysis of the
schools is apt to produce on unfamiliar ears the
effect produced on Pascal by the Spanish Latin of
certain Jesuit fathers. *^Can these fellows really
be Christians f he asks. I am not certain to what
degree a ^^translation'' of this kind is possible. But
I am sure that a discussion of the relationships be-
tween psychoanalysis and ordinary psychology is
essential, and I believe that it will throw light on
many points that are still obscure.
In the field of theory, I have endeavoured to show
the ties between the psychology which has now be-
come classical, that of Ribot, James, Bergson, and
Claparède, to say nothing of the almost forgotten
Jouffroy. At the same time, I have borne in mind
Descartes' methodological rule: ^^ Divide the subject
into as many subdivisions as you can, for this will
help you to solve the difficulties." It seems to me
that in the totality of ideas which pass by the gen-
eral name of psychoanalysis, at least one great dis-
tinction ought to be made.
(a) Psychoanalysis starts by laying the founda-
tions of an affective theory of the association of
ideas, sl theory which discerns in affectivity, often
subconscious, the cause of the ostensibly incoherent
6 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
creations of the imagination. It is upon this that
the new method of studying the subconscious has
been based.
(b) This affectivity which is discerned behind the
imagination, is in its turn linked by psychoanalysis
with instinct. To the psychoanalysts, all the higher
sentiments appear to be products of the evolution
of a crude instinct. Thus we arrive at a biological
theory of ajfectivity, which is likewise an evolu-
tionary theory of instinct.
It follows that there are two categories, sufficiently
distinct, though not hitherto sufficiently distin-
guished :
(a) imagination explained by affectivity;
{b) affectivity explained by instinct.
The former theory, which is supported by an abun-
dance of facts that anyone can observe for himself,
is all the better for being separated from the latter
theory ; for this, though in broad outlines it appears
acceptable, is complicated in matters of detail by a
number of hypothetical and contradictory formulas.
We must leave to to-morrow the perfectionment of
this biological theory. By confusing the issues, by
trying to compact the two theories into one, we run
the risk of giving a hypothetical aspect even to data
that are based upon an extremely solid foundation.
Larguier des Bancels, in his recent work Introduc-
tion à la psychologie, writes (Avant -propos, pp.
13-14) : **The American school draws a distinction
between functional psychology and structural psy-
chology. Structural psychology analyses the phe-
nomena ; it endeavours to discover their mechanism ;
GENERAL SURVEY 7
in a word, it describes them. Functional psychology
is concerned with the purport of these same phe-
nomena, and seeks to elucidate their biologic rôle.
Here we have two perspectives. They are equally
legitimate but the observer cannot occupy two view-
points at the same time. Aristotle's psychology is
functional psychology. Locke remains the master
of structural psychology. The doctrine of the facul-
ties is a return to Aristotle. The associationism of
the nineteenth century carries on the tradition of
Locke and his eighteenth-century successors."
The first category of psychoanalysis (the affective
theory of association) is a structural psychology;
the second category is a functional psychology. We
have here *Hwo perspectives. They are equally
legitimate, but the observer cannot occupy two view-
points at the same time." They are related to one
another just as anatomy and physiology are related
to one another. Now it is certain that the dynamic
and functional point of view which has been the
favourite outlook in psychology since James, is the
only one enabling us to formulate an integral science
of the phenomena of existence. We have no more
right to blame Freud than we have to blame William
James for having wished to construct a dynamic
psychology. Nevertheless we are entitled to add
that the second point of view (functional) must be
a sequel to the first (structural). When people
begin to give functional explanations in default of a
sufficient descriptive foundation, they must never
forget that they are formulating mere hypotheses.
These may of course be extremely useful in research
8 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
as guiding ideas ; but they are dangerous, for many
people are inclined to make of them a slippery
descent into an unscientific finalism. A dynamic
explanation is the goal we must seek to attain; but
all djmamic explanations will be provisional so long
as our static descriptions remain inadequate. In
like manner, when we have to trace a continuous
curve representing experimental data, we must not
endeavour to do so until we have directly deter-
mined a sufficient number of isolated points through
which the curve has to pass. It is the business of
functional psychology to trace the curve; but it is
the business of structural psychology to ascertain
the points through which the curve must pass.
This distinction between the two categories corre-
sponds to the distinction which Bovet has drawn be-
tween psychoanalysis as a method and psychoanal-
ysis as a doctrine, for whereas the method is essen-
tially based on the former theory, the doctrine is
built on the latter.
** Psychoanalysis,^' writes Bovet, *4s, above all,
a method for the study of the subconscious. To
initiate ourselves into psychoanalysis is to form an
idea of this method and to attempt the manipulation
of this instrument.
** Frequently, however, experts in psychoanalysis,
identifying the method with the results, present it
to us as a body of doctrines bearing upon the nature
of the subconscious ego, and offer it to us as a new
psychology. In this they resemble a Pisan of the
seventeenth century who should have given the name
of * telescopy' to Galileo's opinions concerning the
GENERAL SURVEY 9
satellites of Jupiter and concerning the solar system
in general.
^'It is well to point out that the wide differences
which separate the various schools of psychoanalysts
(those of Freud, Adler, and Jung, respectively) do
not impair in any way the value of the instrument
which they all alike use as a means of study. The
differences relate to the interpretation of the facts
which psychoanalysis has revealed. Let us suppose
that two astronomers, independently studying the
planet Mars, detect the phenomenon which is kno^vn
as the gemination of the canals of that luminary.
Perhaps one astronomer will tell us that the gemina-
tion is due to some peculiarity in the refraction of
light, whereas the other will ascribe it to a seasonal
variation in the distribution of the waters of the
planet. But the existence of such disputes does not
justify us in contending that telescopes are useless.
Rather should they urge us to perfect our utilisation
of telescopes, or to supplement their employment
by other methods which will enable us to reduce the
uncertainties attendant on the interpretation of the
phenomena we are observing. ^ ^ ^
I shall perhaps, when I come to the concrete ex-
position of cases, be charged with having failed to
abide by my ov/n distinction. I am aware that it is
extremely difficult to avoid adopting the current
methods of exposition. Conversely, in practice it is
sometimes difficult to disentangle the fact from the
interpretation. Simply by recording a fact, we in-
terpret it ; and language is a web of interpretations.
^ Pierre Bovet, La Psychanalyse et L'éducation, pp. 4-5, 1920.
10 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
When, therefore, the reader comes across a fnnc-
tional interpretation which seems to him to lack
adequate verification, let him prefix the words:
** Everything happens as if . . .'' This prefix will
not conflict with the essence of my thought.
3, Guiding Principles of the Present Work
Thanks to this distinction, I have at least been
able to avoid the perpetual mingling of comprehen-
sive functional hypotheses with the description of
the affective laws of the association of images
(Chapter Two). I therefore regard the symholism
of dreams as a natural result of the working of the
laws of condensation and displacement, and I do not
apriori consider symbolism to be the purposive
masking of repressed and *^ censored'^ mental proc-
esses. This notion of the * ^ censorship ' ' has been
strongly criticised, even by psychoanalysts (Eivers,
for instance). There are plenty of cases in which
it is not necessary to invoke such a hypothesis,
whereas condensation is a persistent fact. This con-
densation, which groups images characterised by a
common affect, groups them so as to form a single
composite and new image, is the first stage in the
creation of the symhoL I look upon symbolisation
as a general law of the imagination, and not as being
necessarily the outcome of the masking of forbidden
representations. This applies equally to artistic
symbols, which have with good reason been com-
pared to the spontaneous symbols of dreams. An
author may use a symbol to disguise his thought
and thus throw an official censorship off the scent;
GENERAL SURVEY 11
this is what Montesquieu did in his Lettres persanes.
On the other hand, an author may use a symbol sim-
ply as a means of self-expression; this is the prac-
tice of the symbolist poets.
The condensation of images lies at the very root
of creative imagination. This implies that creative
imagination is the direct outcome of an affective
state, so that we might say that sensibility itself is
the true creator of new images. Condensation is
more powerful in strong affective states than in
weak ones; it is more powerful likewise in dreams
than in waking states. This leads us to ask what may
be the common element in affective states and dream
states, and we realise that the two types of condition
are characterised by a suspension of activity, of
spontaneous movement. Both affectivity, and the
dream or the reverie which affectivity engenders, are
pent-up action.
Thence we pass to the dynamic outlook (Chapter
Three), and we ask what can be the function or
functions of the dream (and of such kindred states
as reverie and aesthetic creation). First of all, we
look upon the dream as an exercise of the creative
imagination. In this respect its usefulness, even
from the point of view of action, is evident. The
intelligence ensures our adaptation to the real; the
imagination ensures the adaptation of the real to
ourselves. But when we come to consider the re-
markable law of displacement (whose working is
manifest in dreams), the law in virtue of which an
affect is detached from its real object and trans-
ferred to another object, we cannot but assimilate
12 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the dremn to play, in which the imagination of the
child effects like displacements. If we study the
conditions of dreaming and of play, their kinship
becomes even more apparent. Since Karl Groos
wrote on the subject, play has been looked upon as
an outlet or exercise for unutilised tendencies. The
dream, a manifestation of pent-up action, is in like
manner the outcome of unutilised tendencies. In the
dream, these tendencies are discharged; they exer-
cise themselves ; they enact the possibilities of their
future evolution.
For tendencies evolve. They are the psychologi-
cal manifestation of instinct ; and instinct, which was
long regarded as immutable, is now looked upon as
susceptible of development. In man, above all, in-
stinct is malleable. Naturalists have shown that
suppressions and transformations of instinct occur
among animals. Psychologists (William James, for
instance) point to the same phenomena in man.
Freud's originality lies in this, that he discloses the
link between suppression and transformation. Sup-
pression is apparent merely; although the instinct
is repressed, it still lives in a modified form. Ap-
proaching the matter from the other side, we may
say that an instinct which has been transformed is
preeminently an instinct which has been restrained.
Thus psychoanalysis culminates in an evolutionary
theory of instinct. The transformations of instinct
are clues to the affective life; and the higher senti-
ments are nourished by instinctive forces. Freud
has turned his attention to the evolution of the sexual
instinct ; Adler, to the instinct for power. Jung at-
GENERAL SURVEY 13
tempts a synthesis of the two systems, unifying
under the term libido all instinctive energy. But
this unification belongs rather to the realm of phi-
losophy than to that of science. From the psycholo-
gist's point of view we are inclined to ask whether
the reconciliation of Freud's views with Adler's
should not rather be sought upon a deliberately
analytical platform ; and whether, instead of consid-
ering all instincts as manifestations of one single
kind of energy, it would not be better if we were
more modestly to study the evolution of each instinct
by itself. Psychoanalysis is an evolutionary theory
of instinct; it ofu^ht to become an evolutionary
theory of the instincts. We need not hesitate to ad-
mit that a number of different instincts can partici-
pate in the genesis of the same higher sentiment.
This purely analytic path, which is not the path of
the systematist, is the one which British and French
writers upon psychoanalysis appear to be following.
Both Rivers and MacCurdy have studied war neu-
roses as functions of the instinct of self-preserva-
tion, and Bovet has written a monograph on the
combative instinct. Henceforward we must delib-
erately work along these lines. Thus we shall free
psychoanalytic science from that systématiseras
spirit, from that inappropriate metaphysic, which
have been its bane, and which have prevented super-
ficial observers (and even some persons of first-class
intelligence) from recognising its value as a con-
tribution to positive science.
In the practice of psychoanalytical re-education, s
14. STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
it will, moreover, be fruitless as a rule to attempt a
choice from among hypothetical interpretations when
these belong to the second category (the biological
theory of affectivity). Freud, Adler, and others
have secured successes by explaining to their pa-
tients that the symptoms with which these were
affected were due to causes which they themselves
(the psychoanalysts) have inferred as the outcome
of the analysis. Now each analyst has his own
theory, and the causes explained to the patient vary
from analyst to analyst. Yet the practical successes
of the treatment are indubitable. Does it not fol-
low that we should be mistaken in attributing these
successes to remote causes of an extremely hypo-
thetical character, when immediate and far less
hypothetical causes are competent to explain them*?
Or, following Bovet's terminology, may we not say
that the curative power of psychoanalysis depends
more upon the method than upon the theory which
guides it?
At this stage, sceptics will obviously declare that
the results are not due to a knowledge either of the
affective causes or of the biological causes, but that
everything is the outcome of suggestion. This ob-
jection merely proves that the objector is ignorant
of psychoanalysis. All the same, despite its naïvety,
the psychoanalysts will do well to take the criticism
into account. Those who have studied suggestion,
and in especial those who are familiar with the work
of the New Nancy School,^ are well aware that the
^ See the author's other writings, enumerated in the Bibliog-
raphy.
GENERAL SURVEY 15
factor of suggestion plays its part in every method
of treatment and in all kinds of education. Purely
physical therapeutic methods do not escape the work-
ing of this law; statistics have demonstrated its im-
portance in connection with the treatment of con-
sumption/ But in psychoanalysis, where we have
to do with the nervous system and the subconscious
(which is preeminently the field of suggestion), and
where in addition an intimate affective relationship
is apt to be established between teacher and pupil,
there can be no question but that the factor of sug-
gestion is powerfully operative. This does not de-
prive the method of any part of its objective value;
but when the psychoanalysts would fain prohibit sug-
gestion, they are asking the impossible. Seeing,
then, that it is inevitable that suggestion should ac-
company the analysis, would it not he better to guide
this suggestion instead of trying to ignore it?
Here we again reach a point where a great many
analysts, intolerant in matters of practice no less
than in matters of theory, seem to have wished to
break down the bridges behind them. The only psy-
chology, they tell us, is psychoanalysis ; and in like
manner they insist that psychoanalysis is the only
psychotherapeutics. They discard suggestion as an
obsolete method, superseded by analysis, and in con-
flict with the latter. For my part, I believe that this
supposition of a conflict between psychoanalysis and
suggestion is based upon a number of false hypoth-
^ Louis Renon, Tuberculose pulmonaire chronique, "Le Monde
Médicale," January 15, 1914. See also Baudouin, Suggestion
and Autosuggestion, pp. 97-9.
16 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
eses, and upon misunderstandings which I am en-
deavouring to clear up. Psychoanalysis is incom-
patible with certain forms of suggestion; but it is
perfectly compatible with others. I regard the in-
tolerance which some analysts display towards sug-
gestion as no less deplorable than the sceptical atti-
tude of practitioners of suggestion towards analysis.
The method to which experience has led me, the
method whose results are recorded in this book, is
founded upon an unceasing collaboration between
autosuggestion and psychoanalysis (Chapter Four).
Many, I know, regard this as a heresy. Whether it
be heretical or not, I am confident that immense
advantage can be derived from such collaboration.
Generally speaking, throughout this work more
stress is laid on the normal than on the pathological.
In my view, analysis is a method of education or
re-education rather than a curative method.^ In
many cases, the internal conflicts which the analysis
has to resolve cannot be looked upon as morbid.
Pfister is right in insisting that we must call normal
education to our aid. Even where we have to deal
with morbid symptoms, we shall help the patient by
showing how these have developed through the
hypertrophy of conditions that are perfectly normal,
so that our therapeutic analysis will take the form,
not so much of an amputation which cuts everything
away, as of a cauterisation which removes what is
superfluous. Psychoanalytical experience merely
confirms our view that the difference between the
^ I take the same view of suggestion.
GENERAL SURVEY 17
pathological and the normal is only one of degree.
But, like every medical method, it has begun by con-
sidering the pathological, and its consideration of
the normal has been a secondary reconstruction.
This pathological method is an excellent one ; and its
application to psychology has brought about the
maximum of progress, for, precisely because the
pathological is a^S) it were the normal seen through
pathological is as'iit were the normal seen through
a microscope. Hypnotism and suggestion consti-
tute one way of applying this method; psychoanal-
ysis is another. But if psychoanalysis, like sugges-
tion, has naturally followed the route from the patho-
logical to the normal, it is essential to impress upon
psychoanalysis (and to do so more vigorously than
has yet been attempted) the inverse movement — the
movement which, as far as suggestion is concerned,
was initiated at Nancy and carried to its logical
conclusion by the New Nancy School. The Salpe-
trière School, having discovered suggestion in per-
sons suffering from hysteria, looked upon it as a
morbid phenomenon, and was inclined to detect hys-
teria in everything. The Nancy School, psychologi-
cal rather than pathological, inverting the order of
research, set out from the normal phenomena which
had been revealed by the light of pathology, to pass
on by degrees to the study of morbid modifications.
The route from the pathological to the normal is
one of research ; the route from the normal to the
pathological is one of exposition and synthesis. The
two methods are complementary. Whenever the
study of the pathological has thrown light on a nor-
18 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
mal phenomenon, we must do our utmost to deduce
the pathological from the normal, and thus to put
things in their places. The psychoanalysts have
rarely reversed the engine in this way. Conse-
quently Han Eyner, though as a thinker he is sym-
pathetic towards psychoanalysis, once asked mis-
chievously whether the doctors would not soon be
talking of *' chronic normality'* or ** acute health.*'
In this realm of thought, an error of terminology
is current, and the experts are themselves largely
to blame for its existence. I refer to the identifica-
tion of the words ** nervous" and *^ neuropathic,"
Analysis undoubtedly confirms the supposition that
the three terms *^ nervous," ^'affective," ^4magina-
tive," have kindred connotations. But we must not
infer, as some are inclined to do, that moral sen-
sibility and imagination are pathological manifesta-
tions. The nervous person is a potential neuropath,
just as a biped is a potential cul-de-jatte; ^ but he is
not necessarily a neuropath. We have no right to
describe aesthetic, philosophical, and religious phe-
nomena as forms of the neuroses and psychoses.
Nevertheless certain analysts employ phraseology
which conveys this impression. A professor of the
University of Geneva, during a philosophical discus-
sion with a psychoanalyst, found it necessaiy to
interject good-humouredly : ^'But what difference do
you make, then, between a metaphysician and a pa-
tient suffering from dementia prœcoxV^ Such
errors of terminology may entail errors of thought,
dangerous errors. Some psychoanalysts seem to
^ A person who has lost both legs.
GENERAL SURVEY 19
regard the whole human mind as an elaborate sexual
perversion; others, as an imaginative compensation
for an organic inferiority. Following this line of
thought, man might be defined as *^a neuropathic
animaP'; and it is perfectly true that the human
nervous system possesses a delicacy of poise, and
consequently a liability to injury, which is unknown
among ruminants.
A person of nervous temperament may develop
into a neuropath, but he may also develop into a
genius. It depends upon which line he is switched
on to. This is the significance of the well-known
formula: **A neurosis is an unsuccessful work of
art; a work of art is a successful neurosis.'' We
must not, of course, infer that the two things are
equivalent. The difference between failure and suc-
cess may perhaps represent the whole difference be-
tween the pathological and the normal, for the nor-
mal is essentially a successful adaptation. A runner
may become the champion; it is also possible that
he will fall and break his leg. He will not think
it funny if you tell him there is no difference.
If we take the normal as our starting-point, we
are taking a psychological outlook'instead of a medi-
cal outlook, and consequently we are building an
additional bridge between psychoanalysis and the
classical psychology. For the aim of the classical
psychology was to describe the mind of the normal
man, of a man so normal that he was at times stupid.
(We remember some of the truisms of the scholas-
tics, the eclectics, etc.) For a long time psychology
had to pay for the fact that its origins were exclu-
20 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
sively pliilosopliical ; during this period it was
largely restricted to the domain of solemn and futile
generalisations. We have to thank Auguste Comte
for having run atilt, not as has been declared against
psychology in general, but against the psychology
of the schools ; and Ave have further to thank him for
the appeal to pathological methods of study, which
were destined to furnish such brilliant results a few
years later. But we must avoid the opposite ex-
treme, must avoid undue eagerness to study the
pathological where classical psychology was unduly
inclined to study the normal — though such undue
stressing of the pathological is an almost inevitable
characteristic of methods that are medical in their
origin. By studying the normal aspects where medi-
cal psychologists have studied the pathological, we
shall be able to integrate the two methods in psy-
chological science. It is very probable that the nor-
mal phenomena of which we are in search have al-
ready been noted, though not perhaps fully under-
stood, by psychologists ; we may find that they have
been named, and have been coordinated with a whole
system of known facts. We have to act as inter-
preters between the respective tongues of psychology
and pathology. Perhaps, too, we have to act as
interpreters between the French of the psycholo-
gists and the German of the pathologists.
This much is certain, that we should serve French
thought an ill turn if we allowed it to persist in its
ignorance of such a movement as psychoanalysis.
We may note, indeed, that French writers are be-
ginning to show an interest in the question. So
GENERAL SURVEY . 21
judicious an authority as Pierre Janet, though criti-
cal and even harshly critical of many psychoana-
lytical interpretations, deplores that prejudices
against psychoanalysis are prevalent in France,^
and devotes a long study to this method.^ H. Pieron,
again, has written an appreciative essay on a work
by Elvers which is entirely based on psychoanalysis.^
An absurd chauvinism is perhaps still responsible
for hostility to a ^* German doctrine," and the joke
of the matter is that the founder of this alleged
*' German doctrine'' is an Austrian Jew. In any
case, truth has nothing to do with passports and
birth certificates. Freud's psychology, like Ein-
stein's physics, is an extant fact. We cannot sup-
press a fact by refusing to look at it; this is the
wisdom of the ostrich. No one can do away with a
revolution by imitating Louis XVIII, who spoke of
1814 as the twenty-second year of his reign. Nor
can anyone get rid of the fact that Galileo lived and
wrote. The pontiffs who excommunicate, succeed
only in excommunicating themselves. The move-
ment of' human thought goes on outside their church,
and quietly leaves them stranded. E pur si muove!
* Pierre Janet, Les médications psychologiques, 1919, vol. ii.
p. 268.
2 Ibid. (Les traitements par la liquidation morale), pp. 204 et
seq. — Cf. the same author's Rapport au Congrès de Londres,
1913. — Pierre Janet was at the outset distrustful of psychoanaly-
sis. To-day he is far more sj^mpathetic.
^ H. Pieron, Une adaptation biologique du Freudisme aux psy-
chonévroses de guerre (a review of Rivers' Instinct and the Un-
conscious), "Journal de Psychologie," Paris, 1921, No. 1.
PART ONE
THEOEETICAL EXPOSITION
CHAPTER TWO
SKETCH OF AN AFFECTIVE THEORY OF THE
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS
7. From Associationism to Psychoanalysis
Why and how do ideas and images become asso-
ciated, so tliat one calls up another ; above all, why
does this happen when there is no rational tie, and
in the absence of voluntary effort? How can we
explain the spontaneous and apparently capricious
progress of a mind which ^4s thinking about noth-
ing," and which, all the same, is thinking about a
thousand things? Since the days of Plato and
Aristotle these questions have aroused the interest of
many philosophers. In modern times they have been
the especial concern of the empiricist school of Locke,
of the French sensualist school (Condillac), and
in particular of the British school of the nineteenth
century which is specifically known as the associa-
tionist school (Hamilton, John Stuart Mill, etc.).
For these philosophers, association was of supreme
importance, inasmuch as they looked upon ^^ simple
ideas," or images, as atoms, as elementary psychic
units; and they considered that the manifold com-
binations of such units sufficed to explain the whole
life of the understanding. The combinations, it will
be remembered, took place in accordance with the
laws of contiguity, similarity, and contrast. Two
25
26 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
images became associated when their objects had
been perceived side by side ; or when they were like
one another; or when they were contrasted. More
precise differentiae were subsequently added to these
vague general laws. The force of associations was
measured (experimental work of Ebbinghaus, Millier
and Pilzecker, Jost) ; the rapidity of associations
was measured (Miinsterberg, Scripture) ; associa-
tions were classified in accordance with the charac-
teristics of the associated terms and their varying
mutual relationships, of form or colour, co-ordina-
tion or subordination, etc. (classifications of Wundt,
Miinsterberg, Claparède). With the passage of the
years, however, the vast hopes of the associationists
were disappointed, and the basic defect of their
theory was gradually revealed. The mistake was
that the associationists had tried to explain the
interaction of the images by the inherent characters
of these images, without appealing to any external
force ; much as if an observer, ignoring the presence
of a magnet and its properties, should endeavour to
understand why iron filings in a magnetic field group
themselves along the lines of force while considering
these filings as mere independent particles. Such
an observer might make interesting observations on
the positions of the particles, and he would be able
to formulate certain laws; but to arrive at an ex-
planatory and synthetic principle would be beyond
his power. Underlying the associationists' doctrine
and invalidating it, is an implicit postulate that the
representative life is self-explicable, that the fan-
tasies of the imagination can be made comprehen-
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 27
sible by a study of tlie nature of the images. People
came to realise that this doctrine was inadequate
and arbitrary, and to suspect where the *^ magnet''
was to be found — in the affective life.
This appeal to the affective life became more and
more necessary in proportion as psychologists re-
nounced the eclectic theory of independent ^'facul-
ties''; but it is interesting to note that in the writ-
ings of Jouffroy, one of the eclectics, we find fore-
shadowings of the modern affective theories. In his
Cours d'esthétique, he supplements the theory of
association (17th Lesson, p. 121) by a remarkable
theory of the symbol (18th and 19th Lessons, pp.
131, 139). Thanks to association, says Jouffroy,
every sensation, every idea, is enabled to evoke and
to signify states of mind which transcend it, thus
becoming a symbol. Jouffroy opines that this prop-
erty is one of the foundations of artistic expression.
He goes so far as to say: ** Everything that we per-
ceive is symbolical, for everything that we perceive
arouses in us the idea of something else that we do
not perceive" (p. 133).
This theory of the symbol, in which Jouffroy shows
that he has an inkling of the muffled affective reso-
nances of a perception or an image, was for a long
time ignored. Everyone is familiar with it to-day,
when psychoanalysis has made symbolism fashion-
able. Gr. Dwelshauvers writes : ' ' Associationism did
not make its way into France before the days of
Taine and Eibot ; but Jouffroy was familiar with the
principles of the associationist school, and the asso-
28 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
ciationist theory suggested to him another theory,
far more comprehensive and more profound. We
may call it symbolism. ' ' ^
**Far more comprehensive and more profound'* is
perhaps hyperbolical. We must resist the tempta-
tion to fill out the term employed by Jouffroy with
all the ideas which the word now arouses in our
minds, ideas that were not present in his when he
used it. But as a foreshadowing, the utterance is
significant.
When we come to Eibot, the affective factor is
explicitly invoked. A fundamental matter, and one
whose importance was fully realised by this author,
is what we shall call ajfective association or conden-
sation. He describes it in the following terms :
^^Eepresentations which have been accompanied by
the same affective state, tend henceforward to be
associated; their affective similarity forms a link
between the separate representations. This is not
the same as association by contigniity, which is a
repetition of the experience; nor is it the same as
association by similarity in the intellectual sense.^
The states of consciousness are linked, not because
they have previously occurred together, nor because
we perceive similarities between them, but because
they have a common affective tone. Joy, sadness,
love, hatred, surprise, boredom, pride, fatigue, etc.,
^ G. Dwelshauvers, La psychologie française contemporaine,
1920, p. 33.
2 That is to say objective similariiy (shape, colour, etc.), the
only similarity with which the associationists are concerned when
formulating the " law of similarity."
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 29
can each become a centre of attraction grouping rep-
resentations or events which are devoid of any in-
tellectual interconnection, but which have the same
emotional tinge — joyful, melancholy, erotic, etc.
This form of association is common in dreams and
in reverie, that is to say, in a state of mind when
imagination works in perfect freedom/ ^^
This passage is so important, and the author states
his views so simply, that it was worth quoting in
full. We shall see shortly some picturesque exam-
ples of this condensation. Enough for the moment
to indicate its importance. In another work Eibot
writes: ^^Substantially, this form corresponds to
what official psychology denotes by the vague term
'the influence of the feeling on the intelligence.' "^
This influence is not an occasional matter; it is
persistent. We cannot fully understand the intel-
lectual life as a whole unless we take into account the
subjacent realm of feeling. Eignano goes so far
as to maintain, as regards various forms of in-
sanity, that these disorders of the intelligence are
fundamentally disorders of feeling. He adds that
attention can be reduced to affective phenomena.^
If feeling thus helps us to understand the working
of the intelligence, it is all the more necessary to
have recourse to a study of feeling when we wish to
understand that more primitive and spontaneous
form of intelligence which is known as imagination.*
- Ribot, Essai sur l'imagination créatrice, 1900, p. 31.
2 Ribot, Logique des sentiments, 1905, p. 22.
3 Rignano, Psychologie du raisonnement, 1920.
* Baudouin, The Affective Basis of Intelligence, 1920.
30 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
In addition to describing condensation, Eibot gives
an excellent account of what he termg the transfer-
ence of a feeling. Transference may, in a sense, be
regarded as the inverse of condensation. Here a
feeling, instead of grouping round itself a number
of separate images, is itself dispersed over a num-
ber of associated images. Kibot writes (Logique
des sentiments, p. 4): ''Transference may result
from similarity. When an intellectual state has been
accompanied by a strong feeling, a similar state
tends to arouse the same feeling. It may result
from contiguity. When intellectual states have co-
existed, the feeling linked with the primary state
tends, if strong enough, to be transferred to the
others. The lover tends to transfer the feeling
which is at first associated with the person of his
mistress, to her clothing, her furniture, her house.
In an absolute monarchy, reverence for the person
of the king is transferred to the throne, to the insig-
nia of power, to everything which is more or less
closely connected with the monarch.''
Anyone, however, who attempts to unravel phe-
nomena of such a character — condensation or trans-
ference, for example — is likely to be led astray un-
less he knows that in many cases this interplay of
feelings and images goes on unawares. Everything
happens as if such links were effected, but as if
they were effected in the subconscious (or ''uncon-
scious"). Eibot, therefore, is perfectly ri^ht when
to the "affective factor" he adds the "unconscious
factor, ' ' which is fundamentally a form of latent af-
fectivity. Thus "at first we have an unconscious
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 31
working equivalent to a series of judgments of value,
and proceeding by analogy. Subsequently, and
mainly, we have an imaginative construction, con-
sisting of associations radiating in various direc-
tions, but unified by the unconscious selective process
of a dominant desire. ' ' ^
At the same date, both Floumoy and Claparède
were drawing attention to these facts. Claparède
describes the evocation of an idea through the in-
strumentality of a feeling: *^ Feeling here plays the
part of an ordinary psychic element in conformity
with the laws of association. When two intellectual
states have been accompanied by the same affective
state, they tend to become associated. The affective
state which cements them may either remain con-
scious or may disappear from consciousness.
Flournoy has given a lucid explanation of the phe-
nomena of coloured hearing by invoking an affective
association of this character.'' ^
In 1903, Claparède was already aware of the im-
portance, in this relationship, of the early works of
Freud : ^ * The leading characteristic of affective as-
sociation is its tenacit}^ "We note this in certain
pathological cases. A psychic element which has
become linked with an emotion is averse to forming
fresh associative ties. For instance, we hear of a
patient who was unwilling to wash the hand which
his sovereign had touched. Here the affect associ-
ated with the hand was inhibiting any new relation-
^Ribot, Logique des sentiments, p. 4.
2 Claparède, L'association des idées, 1903, p. 348.
32 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
ships into wliicli the hand might have entered.
Brener and Freud ^ explain in this way the tics or
habit-spasms, the contractures, and the other morbid
symptoms, from which hysterical patients suffer." ^
Claparède also borrows from Ribot the theory of
transference, and borrows Ribot's examples. With
Ribot, he distinguishes between transference by con-
tiguity (e.g., the venting of wrath upon inanimate
objects belonging to an enemy), and transference hy
similarity (e.g., a mother drawn towards a young
man who resembles her dead son). At this date,
Claparède was already identifying the term trans-
ference with the term Verschiehung (displacement).
In Freud's writings this idea of displacement, which
was destined ere long to play a great part in psycho-
analysis, was more complex than the ^^transference''
referred to by Ribot. According to Freud, the feel-
ing is not merely related to a new object, but is
partly or wholly detached from its former object.
We shall see that this substitution is of supreme
importance in dreams, and that it is one of the phe-
nomena which are prone to mislead us in their in-
terpretation.
To-day, the inadequacy of associationism is gen-
erally recognised. Throughout his philosophical
writings, Bergson inveighs against this atomic for-
mulation of mental phenomena. Let me quote a
specific passage: **We do not contest the truth of
the *law of similarity,' but . . . any two ideas, any
two images chosen haphazard, however discrepant
^ Freud, Paralysies hystériques, p. 41.
2 Claparède, op. cit., p. 346.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 33
they may be, will always be found to have some ele-
ment of similarity, for it will always be possible to
find a common genus to which they can be as-
signed. * ' ^
Brunschvicg, likewise, stresses the consideration
that everything can be associated with everything
else. In the interplay of the images he distin-
guishes, in addition to a function of juxtaposition, a
function of fusion.^ We are now in a position to
presume that affectivity plays its part in this fusion.
Eibot, in the passage previously quoted, actually
spoke of states which **are linked'' under the in-
fluence of the affective factor. We have seen that
Claparède says that a feeling * ' cements ' ' two images.
2. The Laws of affective Association
No one who undertakes an impartial study of the
psychoanalytical conception of the imagination, or
of the psychoanalytical view of association in gen-
eral, can fail to notice how closely akin this con-
ception is to that of Eibot. I point out the fact, not
in order to detract from Freud's title to originality,
but in order to show that Freud's ideas are less sub-
versive than is commonly supposed. Indeed, many
of Freud's writings are contemporary with those of
Eibot, and some antecede those of the French psy-
chologist. As far as our present outlook is con-
cerned, Freud's originality is to be found in his
^ Bergson, L'énergie spirituelle, 1920, p. 153.
2 Brunschvicg, Introduction à la vie de l'esprit, 3rd edition,
1920, pp. 12-17.
34 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
study of imagination and association in dreams.
This field was peculiarly well adapted for the dis-
covery of the affective laws, which operate with ex-
ceptional vigour in the world of dreams. The laws
run parallel with those formulated by Eibot, but
they are more comprehensive. Condensation, dis-
placement, and the rôle of the subconscious, form the
foundations of the psychoanalytical theory of
dreams.
Let us first consider condensation, the Verdich-
tung of Freud. Eibot, in the passage previously
quoted, states that this form is ** common in
dreams"; and he points out that, through condensa-
tion, the images, not content with being juxtaposed,
**are linked." The psychoanalytical view is that
this intimate linking may be regarded as normal in
dreams, a combination so close that keen scrutiny
is requisite before the combined elements can be
distinguished. Our dreams resemble the *' com-
posite photographs" obtained by partial exposures
of the same photographic plate to the image of a
number of different persons of the same family, in
order to bring out ^'family traits." In the case we
are now considering, the family trait is a likeness
of feeling or emotion which serves as a link be-
tween separate memories. Thus it is that in a dream
the landscape we have never seen, but which never-
theless we seem to recognise, is an amalgam of a
number of landscapes which we actually have seen.
Peculiarly applicable to these dream landscapes is
AmiePs saying: *^A landscape is a state of mind."
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 35
In like manner, in a dream, several persons may fuse
into one, because of a common impression they have
made on us, or because they all have the same sig-
nificance for us. This is why we often feel that we
have dreamed of a person or a thing ^^ which all the
same was not precisely that person or that thing.''
It explains, again, the amusing phrases of Marinette
(six years old), relating a dream which she had
after I had told her the story of Hercules : *^I had a
dream about the lion man. He wasn't father, but
he was a man who was father. There wasn't any
lion, but all the same it seemed as if there was a
lion." Here we have an obvious and simple con-
densation of father and Hercules. As a typical in-
stance of condensation I may refer to the dream of
the youth Eaoul, one of the subjects whose cases are
discussed in the second part of this book. He
dreamed of a poste-chaise which was a condensation
of the family motor car and the school omnibus, or,
in a more general sense, a condensation of the family
environment and the school environment ; whilst the
driver was a condensation of the head master and
the dreamer's father. The affective state around
which this condensation had crystallised was a feel-
ing of constraint and of protest against authority
(p. 193). In the first dream of the subject Alexan-
der (p. 300) we have an obvious condensation of his
home with his friend's house, of his mother with his
friend's wife, of his father with his friend.
Condensation is far more conspicuous in dreams
than in the waking state. Freud goes so far as to
say that condensation **has no analogies in the fully
36 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
conscious state. ' ^ ^ Broadly this may be true as re-
gards vigorous condensations, to which Freud ap-
parently wishes to restrict the term Verdichtung —
condensations in which the subject cannot distin-
guish the combined elements. But there are no hard
and fast lines. Various grades of condensation
exist. Thus we have composite images (Mischbil-
dungen) analogous to the centaur of fable, in which
the components (man and horse in the case of the
centaur), though fused into a whole, can readily be
distingTiished. By stages, we pass to looser con-
densations, and finally we reach the simple evocation
(affective association) of Claparede. I hold, how-
ever, that fairly vigorous condensations are met with
in the waking state. The name is peculiarly ap-
propriate for those compound memories in which
the subject believes that his reminiscence is one of
a single experience, whereas it is in reality a remi-
niscence of two or three distinct experiences, which
occurred perhaps at widely separated dates, but
were all accompanied by the same feeling tone. This
is especially common in our memories of childhood.
In the subject Kitty, we note the same thing in recent
memories. She fuses into one reminiscence a gift
which she had on her fiifteenth birthday and one
w^hich she had on her sixteenth birthday (p. 195).^
Vigorous condensations occur in works of art, in
pictures or poems, and are preeminently manifesta-
tions of creative imagination. Speaking generally
^ Freud, Die Traiimdeutinig, p. 462.
2 This condensation was favoured by a strong associatiou by
similarity which was superadded to the affective factor.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 37
we may say that, other things being equal, conden-
sation is more vigorous: (1) in a strong affective
state than in a weak affective state; (2) in dreams
than in the wahing state.
The duration of the condensation must be consid-
ered as well as its degree. Some condensations are
almost instantaneous, and this is especially frequent
in dreams. Some, on the other hand, are persistent.
These latter, of course, are the condensations which
have been *^ cemented'' by a powerful emotion or
feeling, and in this connection the emotions or feel-
ings of early childhood are of supreme importance.
Condensations of such a character, enriched in the
course of life by many kinds of emotions and new
images, are all the more intricate because their essen-
tial elements are usually buried in the subconscious.
One of the main functions of psychoanalysis is to
** extricate'' them, to disentangle them.
We may naturally enquire how so important a
phenomenon as condensation could have escaped the
notice of the associationists. One reason is, the
part the subconscious plays in the matter. Another
reason is, the peculiar conditions under which con-
densation takes place. The two states which favour
the occurrence of condensation, namely dreaming
and strong emotion, are states over which there is
little control and in which observation is difficult.
Nevertheless, ought not the associationists at least
to have recognised the significance of the lesser de-
grees of condensation common in the waking state;
and ought they not to have been careful to distin-
guish this phenomenon from simple association by
38 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
similarity? In this case, too, tlie reason of the omis-
sion is obvious, and has important implications. The
reason is that the elements associated or condensed
through the nfiedmm of a common ajfect, are usually
associated or condensed in accordance with the ordi-
nary laws of association (contiguity or similarity).
To use Freud's terminology, we have here an
*' over-determination" (Ueherdeterminierung ) . This
means that the appearance of each element is the
effect of a conjunction of causes any one of which
seems competent to produce the effect. Freud speaks
of over-determination chiefly in the case of images
resulting from a multiple condensation, and when
each feature of the image is the climax of a ** chain
of thoughts." But enough attention has not been
given to the fact that another form of over-deter-
mination is that in which candensation and simple
association are simultaneously at work. We may
express the matter thus :
1. Among various images susceptible of associa-
tion hy contiguity or by similarity, those which have
a common feeling tone will most readily become as-
sociated;
2. Among various images susceptible of associa-
tion in virtue of their common feeling tone, those
which are also susceptible of association by con-
tiguity or by similarity will most readily become
associated.
This I believe to be the real reason why the asso-
ciationists have overlooked the point. The images
or ideas linked by a common affect were already
linked, it seemed, by the ordinary laws of associa-
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 39
tion. Content with the explanation of the associa-
tion by similarity or by contiguity, the association-
ists did not realise that there was any need to look
farther afield.
Let me give examples from dreams of my own
which will serve to elucidate this type of over-deter-
mination.
In a dream I see a drawing of Christ's head, with
a crown of thorns that resembles a staircase, which
is called *' automatism. ' ' When the picture is
turned, it represents the head of Louis XVI and
also the death-mask of Pascal.
Here we have a medium degree of condensation,
for the different images of Christ, Pascal, and Louis
XVI, which make up the composition, are still dis-
tinguishable. All three of them died in their prime,
and all were persons of mark (a god, a genius or a
saint, and a king). The death-mask of Pascal was
one which I had drawn when I was sixteen, and had
hung on the wall of my room. Analysis of the dream
shows me that it concerns an * * ego ' ' which no longer
exists. It concerns the ardent idealism of youth;
above all it concerns the religious faith of childhood,
and childhood reaches its critical term at sixteen.
The condensation of the three images is obvious,
but it is also clear that there are simple associations
between them. The link between Christ and Pascal
is closer than the other links, for this death-mask
which I had drawn in former days was framed in
some of Pascal's thoughts, and one of these was:
** Christ's passion will endure till the end of the
world; we must not sleep as long as it lasts." The
40 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
number 16 forms the link between Louis XVI and
the drawing of Pascal, which I had made when six-
teen years old.
The cro\\Ti of thorns, which is a staircase, and
which is called automatism, is the outcome of a
more vigorous condensation. The analysis discloses
in it a number of elements. The affect which unites
them is the sense of oppression by the ^* automatism
of life." But this automatism is itself a compound.
First of all, it is the mechanism of nature, of which
when I was sixteen science had given me the idea
and the feeling; and this realisation of mechanism
in nature had initiated my loss of the old faith.
Secondly, the automatism is the distressing mo-
notony of daily life. (The staircase was called up
by a real staircase of three hundred steps, like the
days of the y fir; and in addition by Laforgue 's
verse, ^^What a dreadfully daily thing life is!")^
Thirdly, the automatism is L'automatisme psycho-
logique by Pierre Janet, which had been one of the
first books to turn my attention towards psychology;
and at the time of my dream I was engaged in
psychological study and was suffering from over-
work. There were additional elements in this con-
densation besides the three I have named. But here
likewise it is easy to detect the ordinary associa-
tions between these elements. In this respect the
name of Janet's book is typical. The book had been
brought into the matter both by its title (simple
association) and by its significance in my life (con-
densation). Another association, quite supei-ficial,
1 " Ah que la vie est quotidienne ! "
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 41
linked the book to the staircase of three hundred
steps. This staircase was known by the expressive
name of Tire- Jarret [the calf-puller], and in record-
ing another dream in which the staircase had ap-
peared to me I had, by a slip of the pen, written the
name Tire-Janet. Superficial associations like this
have been freely noted in dreams by other authors
before the days of Freud. Not only do they exist,
but they exist as between images which may also be
linked by some deep feeling. This is why Freud
declares that an indifferent trait common to the be-
ings who, in a dream, combine to form a composite
personality (Mischperson) masks the existence, be-
tween these same beings, of a significant trait, com-
mon to them, but repressed. More generally,^ he
declares that behind every superficial association
(of shape, colour, assonance, etc.) t&ere is hidden a
deep association between the same elements. As
the outcome of repression, he contends that there
has been a displacement of the deep association
towards the superficial association.^ I do not think
that the supposition of repression and displacement
is always necessary in these cases; but the coexist-
ence of the superficial tie and the deep (affective)
tie is of frequent occurrence. Associationism takes
note only of the superficial tie. An associationist
would have detected the superficial ties in the fore-
going dream, but he would never have suspected
that the dream gave expression to regrets for the
regal and divine life of youth, and to protests
1 Freud, Die Traumdeutung, p. 239.
2 Ibid., p. 418.
42 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
against the mechanisation of real, life, against the
overwork and the monotony of the daily round.
Here is another example, also taken from a dream
of my own. At first sight the associations seem
purely superficial, this time of an auditory char-
acter.
I awake remembering some fragments of a dream
in which I have been guided somewhere by a person
who was like ** Monsieur Laederach." In real life
this gentleman had played a part in a lawsuit in
which I had to defend my ideas upon suggestion,
which, it seemed, had been regarded as revolution-
ary. An obsolete law against magic had been in-
voked by the prosecution! The affair had turned
out all right in the end, but had been very trouble-
some to begin with. In the half-consciousness of
waking I attempt to analyse my dream, but first of
all, beneath the name Laederach I hear, as if in
harmonics, the words *'Leider-ach, Umfrid, Unrat,
Henrath." Are these merely superficial associa-
tions? The strange thing is that the closest audi-
tory association is between the first and the last
words of the series, between Laederach and Ken-
rath. It seems to me as if Unrat had been called
up by Henrath, and Umfrid by Unrat. At the mo-
ment of waking, I follow the sequence in the reverse
order. When I have found Henrath, it seems to
me (I was not sure at the time, but I was able to
verify the supposition afterwards), that this had
been the name of a man who, when I was quite
young, had acted as my guide in a foreign town, and
who had cheated me extensively. The happenings
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 43
in this town constituted my first experiences of
serious action on my own initiative; indeed they
represented one of the crises of my life, my first
vigorous attempt to shake off the dominance of en-
vironment, my first affirmation of my own ideas —
an affirmation whose outcome was that I was cast
off by some of the persons most dear to me. (I
then perceive that the guide, Laederach, of my
dream had been condensed with Henrath both as
regards personality and name.) But my dream has
contained a word-play on the name of Henrath, for
the last syllable of this name. Eat, means in German
** adviser,'^ a term which can well be used to denote
a guide. I disparage him by calling him Unrat, for
I interpret this as meaning **evil counsellor,'' be-
fore I recall that it really signifies *^ filth." But
** Laederach" is also **evil counsellor," which I ex-
press quite simply by breaking up his name into the
two German words Leider! Ach! (Alack! Alas!)
The deep affective tie marked by the superficial as-
sociations begins to become apparent. The word
Umfrid, less intimately linked to the others on the
surface, gives fuller expression to the deeper ties.
Its signification in my mind is **the opposite of
peace," just as Unrat signifies *Hhe opposite of
good counsel." Umfrid is also the name of a
German pastor distinguished during the war for the
courage with which he championed pacifist views,
a course of action which led to his persecution.
Now the ideas which, at the time when I had been
acquainted with the guide Henrath, had cost me
some of the dearest friendships of youth, had also
44 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
been social ideas of a pacifist character, and I had
bitterly reflected that one who desires peace begins
by sowing strife in the minds of those around him.
(Here we have a reminiscence from the Gospels:
^' Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:
I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am
come to set a man at variance against his father,
and the daughter against her mother.") A similar
reflection, less bitter and more ironical, had crossed
my mind when I had seen how my ideas concerning
suggestion, which were benevolent and were un-
questionably pacific, had involved me in a fight.
The affect which had linked the four words dom-
inated the entire dream. It was a call for the cour-
age of self-affirmation; for the courage that is
needed to emerge from a somewhat pusillanimous
quietism; to confront life, in spite of all the filth
(Unrat), all the distresses (Leider! Ach!), and all
the struggles (Umfrid), which one has to encounter
during the active realisation of an idea.
The analysis shows the complexity of such a con-
densation. Beyond question, this word is an ex-
tremely general and imperfect label for a number of
phenomena which must be studied more closely.
The state which gives rise to a condensation is in
most cases something much more than a simple
emotion; it is an affective tliougJit, one with very
definite shades, and each shade (Unrat, Leider-ach,
Umfrid) has to secure its own expression in one of
the elements of the condensation. In fact, we have
a regular network of ideas and images intercon-
nected in multiform ways.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 45
Displacement {Verschiehung) is in point of form
a simpler and more obvious phenomenon than con-
densation, though in essence it is perhaps more re-
markable. We have previously pointed out that it
is of the same nature as what Eibot terms trans-
ference, but more comprehensive. The displace-
ment with which we are concerned is a displacement
of the affect or affective stress, a displacement in
virtue of which the feeling or emotion is more or
less completely detached from its real object in
order to become attached to another object. It
might be spoken of as a transference attended by
forgetfulness, complete or partial, of the point of
departure. Eibot referred to the way in which rev-
erence for the person of the monarch may be trans-
ferred to the throne, to the insignia of power.
Sometimes the starting-point is entirely forgotten,
as when the worship of a relic is not superadded to
but substituted for the worship of a saint. Kelig-
ious ritual and national custom abound in examples
of such substitutions. They are by no means un-
common in individual life. Our apparently irra-
tional preference for certain flowers, or for certain
colours, frequently depends on the fact that very
early in life these flowers or colours became asso-
ciated in our minds with the personality of someone
to whom we were deeply attached, but whom we
have now forgotten. Uni:easonable fears have, in
many cases, a like origin. Displacements of the
same character, but transient, occur from moment
to moment in dreams. In the child Linette (pp. 149,
150, dreams I, II, and III), we observe certain ele-
46 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
mentary displacements, some occurring in the wak-
ing state and some in dreams. In especial, a little
nigger doll filches the feeling which had been at-
tached to a black kitten. Again, a large, white, and
straight-limbed doll takes the place of the nigger
doll, which is small, black, and seated like a child in
a bath. In the latter case we have a displacement
which is the sequel of an association by contrast.
It might seem at first sight as if displacement
were merely the extreme degree of transference, but
I think we should be wrong to define displacement
thus. Displacement may occur without transfer-
ence. I wish to emphasise this point, which is often
overlooked, for its recognition will enable us pres-
ently to effect a more comprehensive synthesis.
Displacement of affective stress may occur within
the limits of a condensation. In a dream we may
condense, into an integer, objects to which we have
reacted in similar fashion, although these reactions
may have differed greatly in intensity. We con-
dense the starting on a railway journey with an an-
ticipated change in our mode of life. Or we con-
dense an examination we had to pass in early youth
with some trial we are undergoing in our adult life,
and perhaps we add to the condensation a real feel-
ing of physical distress from which we are suffering
during sleep.^ Or we may condense a pleasure of
the table with an erotic pleasure. All these con-
densations are achieved because the elements are
associated by a common affect. We cannot in their
^ During sleep, such a sensation, having no links with an exter-
nal cause, functions much as if it were an image.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 47
case speak of transference (in Kibot's sense), for
transference is the extension of an affective state
to images with which it was not previously asso-
ciated, whereas here the various images are already
stamped with the same affect. There is no place
for transference; but the field is open for a dis-
placement of affective stress. Such condensations
are composed of elements of varying importance;
now, in the dream, the most important element may
become secondary, and an element of minor impor-
tance may assume the leading role. When dream-
ing of an examination, for example, we may cease
to think of the matter which is troubling us in our
waking life; we believe that we have merely been
dreaming of this examination of long anterior date,
and we are astonished because it seemed so impor-
tant to us in our dream.
We are led, therefore, to distinguish two forms of
displacement :
1. In a condensation, the secondary element of
the condensation may become the principal element ;
2. In a transference, the secondary element (that
to which the affect is transferred) may become the
principal element.
We may therefore define displacement as follows :
Given an integration of representative elements
TINGED WITH THE SAME AFFECTIVE SHADE WHETHER BY
CONDENSATION OR BY TRANSFERENCE^ displacement tS
the worJc which tends to detach the feeling or emo-
tion from its principal object in order to attach it to
secondary objects.
But this distinction between two forms of dis-
48 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
placement will enable us, upon another foundation,
to effect a new synthesis. It seems to me that even
in displacement by transference there is a certain
amount of condensation. In a dream in which such
a displacement occurs, the new object of the feeling
is no longer quite what it was before. Something
that belonged to the primary object of the feeling
appears to be transferred to the new object ; certain
elements of the old object have, as it were, passed
over in company with the affect. The subject
Renée, who is pregnant, has a dream (p. 287, dream
III) . In this dream, the womb from which her child
will come takes the form of a door (portière) of
a railway compartment (displacement as a sequel of
association by similarity) : but the door is not an
ordinary door ; it is very heavy, and she has to carry
it (porter — ^perhaps there is a verbal link here be-
tween the porter and portière), it is almost too
much for her. The door, that is to say, is endowed
with some of the traits belonging to the object which
it typifies, and it has therefore become the condensa-
tion of two objects. We might say that when an
affective state is transferred from one object to an-
other, there is then realised, as between these two
objects, that tinging by a common affect which
makes condensation possible. Consequently, al-
though transference appeared to us substantially
the opposite of condensation, we have now to recog-
nise that transference itself involves a certain
measure of condensation. Nor need this surprise us
when, following Freud, we have learned that the
most superficial associations, the associations which
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 49
transference makes use of, serve as a rule to mask
deep, affective associations, which are the germ of
condensation.
In practice, henceforward, we shall regard every
displacement of stress as belonging to the first cate-
gory, and as taliing place between condensed ele-
ments which are of unequal importance.
This displacement of stress is conspicuous in most
nightmares. On awaking we feel it was absurd that
we had been so terribly frightened by some object
which was hardly important enough to arouse
alarm. The reason for the alarm was that we had
displaced to this harmless object the affective stress
properly attaching to some real cause of distress.
Our thought had been deformed, much as a word is
deformed by stressing a syllable which ought not to
be stressed. One of my subjects dreamed of being
attacked by a yellow dog. This dream was founded
upon the reminiscence of an attack actually made
by a dog during childhood, but the peculiar yellow
colour of the dream dog was the colour of the waist-
coat of a doctor who had recently attended the pa-
tient. Condensation had been effected, so that the
attack by the dog had been fused with the attack by
the doctor (the patient's dread of the medical treat-
ment). But, in the dream, the recent cause of dis-
tress was almost hidden in the image of the dog
which had been the old cause of trouble. The sub-
ject Yvonne (p. 282), who is pregnant, falls asleep
obsessed with the fear that the birth of her baby will
take place on a Sunday, and that she will not be
able to get a doctor. She dreams that the stove-
50 STUDIES m PSYCHOANALYSIS
pipe is blocked, that it is Sunday, and that no chim-
ney-sweep is to be had. Sometimes the main object
of the emotion, the matter with which the subject
is chiefly preoccupied, is entirely effaced, thrust
down into the subconscious ; what should have been
the stressed word or stressed syllable remains un-
uttered.
Displacement, like condensation, may be fugitive
or persistent. We have said that transient dis-
placement is frequent in dreams. The symptoms of
neurosis, on the other hand, are the outcome of
fixed displacements. For example, the object of an
intense desire is associated or condensed with a par-
ticular morbid bodily state; the desire is displaced
upon the morbid bodily state, which the subject then
realises (autosuggestion reinforced by the desire^)
in a stereotyped form, as a tic (habit-spasm, etc.),
a neuralgia, a contracture, or a paralysis. The sub-
ject Germaine (p. 340) has a spasm of the eyelid
which symbolises, for her, marriage and enfran-
chisement from maternal authority. The subject
Bertha inflicts upon herself a neuralgia which sym-
bolises enfranchisement from her present environ-
ment and access to a freer and more intellectual life
(p. 353). Slips of memory, * ^mistakes due to ab-
sent-mindedness," etc., may be explained in the
same way as the tics or the neuralgias. They are all
examples of displacement translated into action.
Eeference was made above to persistent and in-
tricate condensations, dating perhaps from early
^ In this autosuggestion, desire plays the rôle of auxiliary
emotion. — See Baudouin, Suggestion and Autosuggestion, p. 114.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 51
childhood, and buried more or less deeply in the sub-
conscious. Such condensations are almost always
accompanied by displacements. The displacements
lead to thoughts and actions, which the subject mis-
interprets, being ignorant of their true origin. The
name complex, which as generally used in psycho-
analytical literature lacks precise definition, may be
applied to such subconscious condensations accom-
panied by displacements. The subject Otto (p.
244) hates singing when the singer is a man; he is
clean-shaven and he imagines it is for aesthetic rea-
sons that he wants no hair on his face; bellicose
sentiments revolt him, and he believes that this aver-
sion is conditioned by purely philosophical reasons ;
he is retiring and awkward in ordinary life: these
are all manifestations of a complex of protest
against the father and of refusal of virility, which
is subconscious, but which thé analysis brings to the
surface and disentangles.
Acquired tendencies are in large measure deter-
mined by complexes; the character is moulded by
them ; they masquerade as inborn traits.
We are now in a position to summarise the chief
laws of affective association.
1. Evocation (Claparède) or affective associor
tion. Two ideas tinged with the same emotion or
feeling tend to call one another up mutually.
2. Condensation (in Freud's terminology. Ver-
dichtung). This resembles evocation, but the ideas
(images) are fused instead of being merely asso-
ciated. Condensation is an extreme form of affec-
tive association. We pass from simple evocation
52 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
to condensation by insensible gradations (weak con-
densations, composite images).
3. Transference (Ribot). The emotion or the
feeling attached to an object (or idea) is extended
to the objects (or ideas) associated therewith in ac-
cordance with the ordinary laws of association (con-
tiguity, similarity, sometimes contrast).
4. Displacement (in Freud's terminology, Ver-
schiehung). Given an integration of representative
elements tinged with the same affective shade
(whether by condensation or by transference), but
unequal in importance; displacement is the work
which tends to detach the feeling or emotion from
its principal object in order to attach it to secondary
objects.
5. Over-determination.'^ The elements which are
associated (condensed) in virtue of their being
tinged with a common affect, are usually associated
as well in virtue of the objective laws of association
(contiguity, similarity, contrast).
We see that these new (affective) laws, far from
claiming to replace the old (objective) laws of the
associationists, are continually invoking the aid of
the old laws. The earlier experimental work upon
association by no means loses its value; it gains a
new value, and calls for fresh experimental work to
round it off. Bleuler has understood how much
light these experiments upon association can throw
'^upon the unconscious and upon diagnosis' ^^ and
^We use this term in a more restricted sense than that in
which it is used by Freud.
2 Bleuler, Ueber die bedeutung von Assoziatiousversuehen, p. 6.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 53
C. G. Jung, working on the same lines, has carried
on in Zurich extensive and able researches on asso-
ciation, both in normal persons and in persons suf-
fering from mental disorder. Jung considers that
in this way he has secured statistical confirmation
of Freud ^s ideas. Errors in the reproduction of
associations already made, marked divergences
whether by excess or by defect from the average
time of association, serve to reveal complexes
(gefuhlshetontè Komplexe)}
The foregoing laws apply both to the waking state
and to the dream state. Dreams are characterised
by a bewildering multiplicity of rapid and rich con-
densations and of instantaneous displacements.
3, Dreaming and Action
We have said (p. 37) that condensation is more
vigorous :
1. In strong affective states than in weak affec-
tive states;
2. In dreams than in the waking state.
Can these two propositions be subsumed under
one formula? In other words, have affectivity and
dreaming a common element?
Eignano maintains the paradoxical theory that
dreaming is non-affective. We must point out, how-
ever, that this author distinguishes between ** af-
fect" and ** emotion," and that he does not deny the
^ C. G. Jung, Psychoanalyse und Assoziationsexperiment, p.
258. — Regarding Jung's experiments upon association time, cf.
Régis et Hesnard, op. cit., p. 140.
54 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
** emotivity'' of dreams. If, therefore, we had to
accept his view that there are no feelings [senti-
merits'] in dreams, we must nevertheless realise that,
in dreams, feelings exist in a latent form. These
latent feelings would be competent to explain the
condensations (just as, in an association by similar-
ity, the consciousness of a similarity of low degree
may not be apparent to the mind). However this
may be, what Eignano writes about dreams is the
weak point in his admirable theory concerning the
affectivity of the intellectual life. This theory
would gain in strength and unity if it were general-
ised so as to apply to the representative life as a
whole, and especially to the life of dreams.^ Frank
introspection, and psychoanalysis, which is an intro-
spection induced by the analyst, are continually giv-
ing evidence that the substratum of dreams is
strongly affective.^
Conversely, affective states in the waking life are
imaginative states and tend to induce reverie. Af-
fectivity and imagination run in couples. The
poet's liveliest images are dictated by intense emo-
tion. These are familiar facts; but the analysis of
condensations renders our knowledge of them more
precise. Vigorous condensation, the outcome of a
strong affect, is the preeminent characteristic of
creative imagination. Affectivity influences asso-
ciation much as heat influences certain mechanical
mixtures, changing the mechanical mixtures into a
^ Baudouin, The affective Basis of Intelligence.
2 So that Freud defines a dream as an imaginary wish fulfil-
ment.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 55
chemical compound. Perhaps we are wrong in
using the term creative imagination; it is the affect
(conscious or subconscious) which is the creator,
and which synthétises the images into new uni-
ties.
All this, however, was implicit in the psychology
of condensation. What we must discover is
whether there exists any other likeness between the
affective state and the dream state, which may serve
as a support to condensation. The main likeness
would seem to be that neither of them is active.
Doubtless affectivity precedes and guides action ; we
may even say that this is its biological function ; but
it discharges itself into the action and loses itself
therein. Hunger is an affective sensation which in-
cites to the act of eating, but disappears in propor-
tion as hunger is satisfied by eating. If the affective
state is to be maintained, the primary essential is
that it should not be completely discharged in action.
** Possession is the death of love," said one of my
subjects. Thus we may contrast *^ affectives" with
** actives." Now it is when activity is maintained
in such a fashion, i.e., when the discharge of affect
into action is incomplete, that it is accompanied by
imaginative production, reverie, condensation.
Imagination, dreaming (in the sense of reverie),
thus manifest themselves as substitutes for unreal-
ised action; they presuppose a surcharge of affect,
a surplus of undischarged affect. During sleep we
have analogous conditions ; sleep is characterised by
the suspension of motor activity. It is then that we
have dreams, which are nothing but pent-up activity.
66 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud ^s concept of regression ^ comprises a num-
ber of diverse phenomena, such as an imaginative
return to scenes of infancy, the translation of ab-
stract thought into images, etc. But, essentially,
regression is what we have just been describing: the
suspension of motor reactions ; and the phenomenon
whereby the mental stream, pent-up as if by a dam,
undergoes a reflux into imagination and dreams.
The Freudian idea of regression is challengeable
for the very reason that it is too comprehensive, em-
bracing phenomena which, though they are linked,
are preferably distinguished; nevertheless, through
the Freudian concept of regression our attention
has been drawn to the affiliation of the phenomena
in question. What Freud speaks of as ** regres-
sion'' has traits in common with what Jung terms
'introversion," with what Pierre Janet ^ describes
as a relaxation of the ** function of the reaP' and as
** derivation," and with what Bergson refers to as
* inattention to the present life."
We should be wrong to consider regression as
necessarily morbid. When we study the matter
from the medical side we are sometimes compelled
to do so, for we then have to deal with unmistakably
morbid regressions, such as the neuroses. This re-
flection justifies the gradations established by Janet
among psychological phenomena. He writes: *'If
this fixing of gradations is to be genuinely inter-
esting and useful, we must formulate them, not from
the outlook of our artistic or moral preferences but
^ Freud, Die Traumdeutung, pp. 427 et seq.
2 Janet, Les obsessions et la psychasthénie, vol. i.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 57
from the outlook of life, health, and illness.'' ^ The
purely psychological outlook is different, and Berg-
son is careful to avoid implying that what he calls
** inattention to the present life" is necessarily mor-
bid ; for this inattention, this temporary detachment
from useful action and practical life is what renders
possible the development of the spiritual life. The
defect of the term ** regression" is that it has dis-
paraging connotations. If we continue to use it,
we must detach it from such ideas. Motor activity
is doubtless the normal way of reacting to impres-
sions, but we must not therefore infer that the sus-
pension of motor activity is morbid or in any sense
* inferior." Were this conclusion true, uncon-
trolled reflex action would be the standard of nor-
mality. But the whole of mental development is
founded upon suspensions of motor activity. Inhi-
bition, the activity which does not take the form of
immediate action, but is **pent up," determines the
passage from reflex action to instinct ; it determines
the appearance of consciousness, whose specialty
seems to be the storing up of possible reactions, the
forming of combinations between them, and the
choosing from among them, instead of allowing
them to discharge invariably and mechanically
along the same path (reflex action). Conscious-
ness is an accumulator and a commutator. May
it not be that states of vigorous condensation are
the same things to an even higher degree, since they
give rise to creative imagination! Even from the
outlook of action, we must not underestimate
^ Janet, Les obsessions et la psychasthenic, p. 477.
68 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
dreams. The dam whereby for a brief space the
mental stream is pent up may serve to give us, as it
were, a head of water, so that the accumulated
energy may in the end find vent in a more effective
discharge.
From the new outlook we have reached through
the study of condensation, all the psychology of per-
ception and of dreams needs revision. I cannot now
discuss the matter, and I merely point it out. Ob-
viously we have here an extensive and fresh field
for investigation.
In a lecture delivered in 1901, Bergson ^ sketched
a noteworthy theory of dreams, which he now re-
gards as capable of being rounded off by Freud's
theory.^ Bergson insisted on the part played by the
sleeper's sensations in the elaboration of the dream
(retinal patches or ^^phosphenes," noises from
without, kinsesthetic sensations) ; but his original
contribution is the way in which he shows how these
sensations call up a number of memories, and give
body to them, to constitute the dream. A retinal
sensation of a green patch with white points may
successively or simultaneously become a field with
sheep on it or a billiard table with its balls. This
has analogies with condensation ; but in addition to
the combination of images one with another, there
is a combination of images with sensations. We
might add that this latter combination, just like con-
densation, is established upon the effective founda-
1 Bergson, L'énergie spirituelle, pp. 91, et seq.
2 Ibid., p. 114, note.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 59
tion which is supplied from moment to moment by
the sensations of the sleeper, and especially by his
kinaesthetic sensations. But Bergson shows that
man's mode of perception in the waking state does
not, in this respect, differ from his mode of percep-
tion in dreams/ In both cases, perception is a com-
bination of crude sensation and of memory. We
know that when we are readinng we do not really
perceive all the letters; we project our memories to
fill out sketchy perceptions; and the actual percep-
tion is the result of the amalgam; our perception
has in it hallucinatory elements. The difference be-
tween (waking) perception and a dream is that in
the former the memories which are superadded to
the sensation are carefully selected with an eye to
utility and possible action, whereas in the dream no
such selection takes place. Both in perception, then,
and in the dream, a process of combination occurs
which reminds us of condensation, and which, like
condensation, presupposes an affective basis.
But the affectivity which underlies the combina-
tion known as *' perception'' is essentially useful in
character. It may be the outcome of the duplex
affective state (interest, dread of making a mistake)
which, according to Eignano, lies at the basis of at-
tention.^ On the other hand, the affectivity which
underlies the dream is disinterested; and it is pre-
cisely this ** disinterest" which, according to both
Bergson and Claparède, characterises sleep. If the
disinterest were complete, we should arrive at Eig-
^ Bergson, Matière et mémoire, passim.
2 Rignano, Psychologie du raisonnement, p. 49.
60 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
nano's theory of non-aff ectivity ; but it seems better
to insist that the suspension of interest relates es-
sentially to interest in useful action.
The theory of perception and of dreaming will be
elucidated by a careful study of hallucination. Con-
densations occur in hallucinations, just as they occur
in dreams ; and the condensations of the former can
be analysed in the same way as the condensations of
the latter; furthermore, a well-marked affective
state is dominant in hallucination. Mourgue, in a
detailed work on hallucination, attaches considerable
importance to the idea of Leuret, of Tours, who
speaks of **twilit states"; Leuret declares that
*^ there are no hallucinations, but only hallucinatory
states.''^ But the form of hallucination which is
of especial interest in connection with the theory of
perception and dreaming is what I have called ^^hal-
lucination by compromise,''^ in which the subject
makes use of real perceptions and modifies them in
the sense of his vision, to which they give a body.
Here we have the same phenomenon as that noted
by Bergson in the case of dreams (the transforma-
tion of the green retinal patch into a meadow or a
billiard table). Of course the real sensation calls
up the image in virtue of an association by similar-
ity, but there can be no doubt that it likewise calls
it up in virtue of an affective association which un-
derlies the condensation. "When the real object per-
* Mourgue, Etude critique sur l'évolution des idées relatives à
la nature des hallucinations vraies.
2 Baudouin, Suggestion et autosuggestion, pp. 34 et seq. ;
English translation, pp. 47 et seq.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 61
ceived by the poet spontaneously becomes image and
symbol, both these processes are also at work. It is
probable that in every hallucination we could detect
such a compromise to a certain extent; it occurs in
dreams, and it occurs in perception. According as
the nature of the affectivity varies in each case, we
find a different form of compromise.
Dream states have been contrasted with states of
attention. It has been said that attention is a re-
striction of the field of consciousness, whereas
dreaming (and reverie) are an expansion thereof.
This is true. But we learn something more when
we agree with Bergson that the restriction of the
field of consciousness is mainly the outcome of the
requirements of useful action. As for Freud, he
helps us to specify under what form the expansion
of consciousness occurs in dreams and states of
imagination ; preeminently, this form is a condensa-
tion consisting of multiple elements. Experience
shows further that dream states and states of imag-
ination are states of ^' outcropping '' of the subcon-
scious.^ We may also say, states of symbolism, in
which affectivity, predominantly subconscious, is
constantly undergoing translation into images.
If the dream is a suspension of the active facul-
ties, and if logical and rational thought is essentially
directed towards action, it need not surprise us to
find that when we dream we ''think in images'' like
the great poets. We can also understand why
^Baudouin, Suggestion et autosuggestion, pp. 106 et seq.;
English translation, pp. 128 et seq.
62 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud makes thinking in images one of the charac-
teristics of what he terms ''regression.'* In espe-
cial, he shows, how even logical relationships appear
in dreams as imagery — a simple succession, for ex-
ample, representing causality/ But the symbolism
of dreams is mainly the subjective expression of
affectivity. Freud seems to reserve the name of
*' symbol' ' for the collective symbols that are the
outcome of associations which are deeply embedded
in the psyche of the race. This is why he says that
*^the task of the analyst is not rendered easier but
more difficult by the existence of symbols in dreams.
The technique of interpretation by the free associa-
tions of the dreamer is not usually valid for sym-
bolic elements."^ But the significance of the term
symbol speedily became enlarged in psychoanalysis.
It is proper to admit that a symbol is the natural
outcome of the interaction of the laws of condensa-
tion and displacement. In a condensation, the
various images condensed through the instrumental-
ity of one affective thought, are symbolic of that
thought; in a displacement, the accessory who or
which has taken the stress, is symbolic of the prin-
cipal who or which has forfeited it. In a dream of
my own recorded on pp. 39 et seq., the heads of
Christ, Pascal, and Louis XVI symbolised a mental
state of regret for the days of adolescence; the
crown of thorns which was like a staircase sym-
bolised the feeling of oppression produced by the
automatism of life. In Yvonne's dream (p. 282),
^ Freud, Die Traumdeutung, pp. 236 et seq.
2 Ibid., p. 26.
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 63
the chimney-sweep symbolised the accoucheur.
When we understand the laws of condensation and
displacement, the symbolism of dreams and states
of imagination is no longer mysterious. Collective
symbols do not differ in their nature; they merely
presuppose that the condensations and displace-
ments on which they depend are such as occur in a
very large number of minds (or, perhaps, that they
have been hereditarily transmitted in accordance
with Darwin's opinion concerning the inheritance
of associations). Furthermore, if it is true (as
Freud maintains) that the free associations of the
subject are hardly applicable in explanation of these
collective symbols, the interpretation of the latter
requires extreme discretion, for it is by the associa-
tions which occur in our subject that we are enabled
to interpret the symbolism of his dreams without
interpolating our own fancies.
I do not propose to give details here concerning
the technique of such an interpretation. I consider
that this technique is essentially based upon the dif-
ference between vigorous condensation and weak
condensation. If we ask a subject in the waking
state to follow the thread of the associations of
ideas which come to him apropos of his dream, we
secure what is tantamount to a decondensation of
the dream. The elements which had become sub-
conscious owing to a vigorous displacement, like-
wise reappear in these associations. It now be-
comes possible to see in what sense the various asso-
ciations must be understood in order to form a
logical whole.
64j studies in PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud has been greatly struck by displacements
of affective stress, and this strange phenomenon of
a transposition of values was certainly calculated
to rivet the attention. Nevertheless it would be an
exaggeration to say that every dream is substan-
tially built up upon such transpositions. We shall
do well to remember that condensation, not dis-
placement, is the primary law of dreams; that
condensation is invariable in dreams; that displace-
ment itself occurs within condensations; and finally
that condensation, quite apart from displacement,
is theoretically adequate to produce symbolisation.
Freud has himself noted the ^* plurality of the mean-
ings of the dream"; ^ and Pfister writes, ** symbols
are inexhaustible. ' ' ^ This multiplicity is the out-
come of condensation. In the case of dreams no less
than in the case of poems we should be wrong to
represent the symbol as an integer consisting of
only two terms. This is true of an allegory, coldly
and deliberately constructed by a sterile imagina-
tion. But the symbol is essentially manifold; it is
a note rich in overtones, and on this depends its
power of calling up associations. Through the
working of displacement, one or other overtone may
be reinforced at the cost of the fundamental tone.
But we must never lose sight of the integer; and,
in fact, is there in this integer a tone which, ob-
jectively regarded, is fundamental! The greater or
1 Freud, Die Traumdeutung, pp. 208, 254.
2 Pfister, Was bietet die Psychanalyse dem Erzielier, p. 84;
French translation, p. 147; English translation, p. 126. (In
the English version, "symbols" is misprinted "symptoms.")
THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 65
less importance assigned to this or that element is
a judgment of value, and our judgments of value are
determined by our outlook. This is why several
alternative interpretations of a dream are possible,
and why they are not mutually exclusive.
Let me give another example from one of my own
dreams. I dream of a mummy who is King Charles
X, and who holds a pen in his hand without being
able to write. The wall crumbles into dust which
falls on the mummy's sleeve, and he shakes his arm
to get rid of the dust. I wake in a fright, to find
that my head is lying awkwardly on my right arm,
which is **dead,'' and in which I feel **pins and
needles." In the half -waking state these pins and
needles seem to me identical with the dust which I
have just seen falling upon the mummy's sleeve, and
I see each pinprick as if it were a grain of dust.
The sensation which has served as the point of de-
parture of the dream is obvious, and we are entitled
to suppose that the dream symbolises the sensation.
On the other hand, this sensation has entered into
a compromise with deeply submerged psychic ele-
ments. I need not give all the details of the analy-
sis, but it is not difficult to recognise in my dream
the same complex as that which underlay the dream
of the three heads recorded on pp. 39 et seq. (Ob-
vious is the association between Louis XVI and
Charles X ; the mummy of my dream was the remin-
iscence of a real mummy I had seen when I was
fifteen years old, and its figure was such as I must
have had at that age.) We are therefore justified
in assuming that the dream about the mununy sym-
66 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
bolised tlie same complex. Wliicli is more * impor-
tant, ' ' the sensation of pins and needles in the arm,
or the complex? Manifestly the answer depends
upon our outlook. To a physiologist, the former is
more important; to a psychologist, the latter. A
fortiori, in the complex itself, in which there are
several divergent elements (intellectual, religious,
aesthetic, political, and sexual), are we entitled to
say confidently that one element or another is more
'important''?
To me it seems rather that a dream resembles an
orchestra. A number of instruments are playing;
sometimes one is dominant, sometimes another. At
will, the ear can follow the notes of one instrument
or another; the importance assigned to any particu-
lar instrument remains purely subjective to the
auditor. Hence arises the possibility of various
interpretations and of very different theories.
Probably the sexual basis of dreams, so sturdily
envisaged by Freud, is almost invariable; no less
invariable, perhaps, is the basis of organic sensa-
tions supervening during slumber. But we must
never lose sight of the ** plurality of the meanings
of the dream"; we must never cease to attend to the
orchestra as a whole.
CHAPTER THREE
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE, AND THE EVOLUTION
OF INSTINCTS
1, The Function of the Dream^ — Dreaming and
Play
"We have been led to the conclusion that dreams,
and indeed imaginative activities in general, are
symbolical of the affective life, and especially of
subconscious affectivity. This symbolism is equiv-
alent to a disguise. But those are inaccurate ex-
ponents who declare apriori that the disguise is
purposive, and who say: **The function of the
dream is to disguise an affective thought ; with that
end in view, the dream employs different processes,
notably condensation, which amalgamates several
images into an irrecognisable blend, and displace-
ment, which substitutes one image for another. ' '
Phraseology of this kind is permissible in a sum-
mary exposition or in a popular essay, when the
writer's sole aim is to give a general and striking
account of psychoanalysis. It is, however, unsatis-
factory from the scientific point of view. We may
point out that Freud begins by expounding the laws
of condensation and displacement. Not until after
1 Under "dream states" I include reverie in the waking state,
poetic creation, etc., as well as dreams during sleep. These last
are typical of all the states in question.
67
68 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
that exposition does lie consider the disguise which
results from condensation and displacement; and
this helongs to what we have called the second cate-
gory of psychoanalysis. Whatever may be the an-
swer given to the question concerning the function
of the dream, the structural description of the two
laws will be unaffected.
The celebrated Freudian theory of the censorship
and of repression is one answer to the question as
to the function of the dream. We may summarise
the theory as follows. Eepresentations and feel-
ings prohibited by prevailing systems of moral and
social ideas, and for that reason felt to be shameful
and distressing, are automatically forced down into
the '* unconscious. *' In dream states, control and
** censorship" are relaxed, and part of the re-
pressed content of the unconscious finds its
way back to the surface; but the censorship, how-
ever sleepy it may be, is still awake, and the re-
pressed content of the mind can only make its
appearance in consciousness by ** showing a white
paw,'' by disguising itself. This process of dis-
guise, which renders the distressing ideas irrecog-
nisable, and therefore less distressing, may be
considered to function as the ** guardian of
sleep." ^
The present writer has no wish to depreciate the
theory of the ** censorship, " which has been one of
the most valuable contributions of Freudian psy-
chology. The theory was suggested by the study of
hysteria ; it has helped to elucidate many of the ob-
^ iFreud, Die Traumdeutung, pp. 432 et seq., aad 446 et seq.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 69
scurer problems both of this disease and of normal
psychology. But the question we have now to con-
sider is whether the theory of the censorship is en-
titled to take its place as a general explanation of
dream states.
Other psychoanalysts have looked at the matter
in a different way. Nevertheless, their ideas have
been borrowed from Freud, for Freud ^s outlooks,
cursory sometimes but unquestionably those of a
man of genius, have sweepingly and vigorously em-
braced most of the aspects of the problem. In
general, therefore, the modifications that have been
made in his theory by other investigators consist
merely of a modified dosage of the various elements
which Freud himself contributed.
Freud, for instance, drew attention to those con-
stituents of the dream which are not merely infan-
tile, but archaic. Writing of symbols (collective
symbols), he says: **That which is to-day linked
under the form of the symbol has presumably con-
stituted at the outset a conceptual and verbal
unity.'' ^
He considers that the thoughts of primitive men
display striking analogies with our own dreams,
and he includes the idea of this resemblance in his
polymorphic concept of ** regression." C. G. Jung
lays considerable stress upon this archaic aspect of
dream states. We dream, he says in substance, as
our ancestors thought, and as children think to-day.
The conceptions which presided over the languages,
laws, and religions of primitive men, reappear in us
^ Freud, Die Traumdeutung, p. 261.
70 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
in the form of dreams.^ The reappearance of the
motifs of ancient myths in the dreams and the de-
liriums of modern man, is a fascinating theme of
study .^
From this it is but a step to the theory of W. H.
E. Eivers, who finds fault with the Freudian ** cen-
sorship" for its * * teleologicaP ' character. Accord-
ing to Eivers it is needless to suppose that there
occurs in the dream an intentional process of dis-
guise, or one directed towards a biological goal.
To understand the dream, he says, we have to accept
the view that the mental life consists of superposed
stages (respectively corresponding, doubtless, to the
successive grades of nerve centres). The upper-
most stage, the last storey to have been built, is that
of voluntary and rational phenomena. Now, as
Eibot^ and Janet among others have shown, the
most recently acquired psychic phenomena are the
least stable. According to this view, the dream
would represent a suspension of the phenomena of
the latest stage (the idea is an old one) ; conse-
quently— and this is the important point — the dream
must necessarily be a return to earlier forms of
thought. Hence dreaming is not symbolical in
order to achieve a disguise. It is symbolical merely
because it is a ''regression" to archaic and infantile
modes of thought, to modes of thought which are
^ C. G. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, pp. 7-37;
Psychology of the Unconscious, pp. 3-41.
2 C. Schneiter, Archaische Elemente in den Wabnideen eines
Paranoiden.
® Cf. Ribot, Les maladies de la personnalité, introduction and
conclusion.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 71
essentially symbolic/ This point of view seems to
have been generally accepted by British and Ameri-
can psychoanalysts.^
The problem of the function of the dream as a
means of disguise will become clearer if we sub-
divide it. The disguise is effected in accordance
with the working of the laws of condensation and
displacement; furthermore, condensation and dis-
placement contribute unequally. Condensation
simply confuses the issues; the real disguise is the
outcome of displacement. If the only phenomena
we had had to consider had been those of condensa-
tion, it is highly probable that the question of a
purposive disguise would never have been raised.
On the other hand, the importance which Freud
gives to this question arises from the way in which,
as previously noted, he has been especially struck
by the phenomenon of displacement — for displace-
ment is disconcerting, and is very apt to arouse the
impression that it must be the work of a mischievous
imp. It behooves us, therefore, to study condensa-
tion and displacement separately in this connection.
We have considered condensation as the funda-
mental law of dreams ; in general, also, as the acute
form of affective association. In the latter respect,
the phenomenon is no stranger than simple associa-
tion by contiguity or similarity. Doubtless, such
phenomena could be expressed in the terms of a
^Rivers, Freud's Concept of the Censorship.
2 S. E. Jelliffe and Zenia X., Psychoanalysis and Compulsion
Neurosis.
72 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
theory as to their purpose, a functional theory; but
it is another question whether we as yet possess the
elements upon which an adequate theory of this char-
acter could be founded. If, however, we remember
that condensation lies at the very base of creative
imagination, and that the latter is to some extent a
primary condition of all progress, we shall catch a
glimpse of the direction in which we may fruitfully
look in order to discover the function of condensa-
tion. Whereas association by contiguity and asso-
ciation by similarity (objective associations) inform
us regarding the fixed elements of external reality
and favour our adaptation to that reality, condensa-
tion (affective association) enables us to conceive
new combinations in conformity with our affective
needs and preparatory to actions which will modify
external reality so as to adapt it to these needs.
We certainly have no longer any right to ignore the
** regressive'' (archaic and infantile) elements of
dream states ; but we must be no less careful not to
forget that dreams are manifestations of creative
imagination. Now creative imagination is what in-
spires every new action and every discovery. A
condensation summarises our affective experience
just as a concept summarises our objective experi-
ence. Both are essential as concerns our action
upon things. In the dream, action is suspended, but
it is suspended in order that we may prepare the
better for action in the future. The Iliad incites
Alexander to conquer the world.
In a word, condensation is the essence of creative
imagination, and the function of the latter is easily
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 73
understood. The intelligence, we repeat, ensures
for our adaptation to the real; the imagination en-
sures adaptation of the real to ourselves. Of
course intelligence may sometimes construct systems
of abstractions which lack solid foundation, and
imagination may wander into the realm of pure
fantasy; in such cases these functions have turned
aside from their goal, as any function may turn
aside; they are at play.
But play itself is an adaptive function. It has
been luminously described as such by Karl Groos.^
Claparede ^ and the modern educational reformers
base on the recognition of this the stress they lay
upon the rôle of play in education. If, with such an
idea in our minds, we turn to consider the law of
displacement, we can hardly fail to see that this lat-
ter has a similar function.
Claparede has outlined a **play theory" of
dreams, comparing them to play as this is under-
stood by Karl Groos. This play would be precisely
what we have noted above, an exercise of creative
imagination. The notion harmonises with Clap-
arede's general theory of sleep; for Claparede re-
gards sleep as an active process, as an instinct, as
something with positive functions. He writes:
**To some degree, from the biological outlook,
dreaming would have a function analogous to that
1 Groos, Die Spiele der Tiere, 1896 ; Die Spiele der Menschen,
1899.
2 Claparede, La psychologie de l'enfant, pp. 430-61; Experi-
mental Pedagogy, pp. 121-38.
7é STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
which Groos ascribes to play; its rôle would be the
exercise of certain activities (creative imagination,
etc.) which are useful to the species, but which have
not always a chance of activity in the individual
life.'^^
Claparède further points out that Floumoy noted
the same **play character" in the productions of
mediums — ^phenomena which are doubtless akin to
dreams.- The play theory of the dream has been
further elaborated by one of the psychoanalysts of
the Jung school, Maeder, who looks upon dreams as
a preparation for life. Freud's criticism of this
idea^ does not settle the question, for it is based
upon a preconceived theory. Freud complains that
the elements to which Maeder appeals do not prop-
erly belong to the dream because they are not un-
conscious; but the question at issue is precisely
whether the dream is necessarily the expression of
elements thrust down into the unconscious, and dis-
guised. Moreover, whereas the problem remains
difficult so long as we contemplate the dream in-
tegrally, it is greatly simplified when we confine our
attention to the law of displacement.
We cannot fail to be struck by the similarity be-
tween displacement in dreams and displacement in
play. This perpetual substitution of objects indif-
ferent in themselves for the real objects of interest,
this way of representing persons and things by sub-
^ Claparède, Théorie biologique du sommeil, p. 325.
2 Floumoy, Nouvelles observations sur un cas de somnambu-
lisme, p. 248.
3 Freud, Die Traumdeutung, p. 451.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 75
stitutes whose analogy with what they represent is
sometimes exceedingly remote, is not this the
method of the child at play! For such a child, a stick
between the legs becomes a horse ; a carpet is the sea ;
a bundle of rags is a doll. In most cases, the dis-
placement is transitory and not very profound.
But the child may at times forget the point of de-
parture, may treat the substitute as if it really were
what it represents, may beat a playmate like a real
enemy (and perhaps be very sorry for it after-
wards). Or a child may mercilessly pull off a but-
terfly's wings, and when chidden may quietly an-
swer: *^But IVe only moved it from the air-force
into an infantry regiment!"
Need we add that symbolical realisations of de-
sire find their place in play as in dream? A child
at play endows itself with attributes which it
** dreams'' of acquiring.
We shall be told this merely proves that dreams
are manifestations of an infantile mode of thought.
So be it! We can do no more than apply a cor-
rective to Freud's thesis by emphasising one of
Freud's own ideas. What else can one do with this
titan of forerunners? It is true that dreams are
manifestations of an infantile mode of thought; but
for that very reason dreams must in certain respects
resemble play, and one of the functions of the dream
must be closely interconnected with the function of
play.
If the dream resembles play in its content, it re-
sembles play likewise in its conditions. Play has
long been regarded as a manifestation of surplus
76 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
energy. Since the publication of Groos^s books we
have come to realise that the surplus here in ques-
tion is that of an instinctive tendency which has not
yet found (or which in some cases has lost) its true
goal; and which is therefore dissipated upon various
objects. For such a tendency, play is an outlet and
an exercise. In this way, playing with dolls is an
outlet and exercise for the embryonic materai in-
stinct; chess, and various competitive sports, are
outlets for the combative instinct.^ In our second
example, and speaking generally as far as concerns
the games of grown-ups, it is more appropriate to
speak of an unemployed instinct than of an embry-
onic instinct. The sports of adults are outlets of
unemployed instincts.
Similar considerations apply to dreams. We
have recognised the existence in dreams of *' pent-
up action,'' that is to say, a tendency which has en-
countered some obstacle to its free expansion. The
dream is an outlet for the tendency (we shall see by
and by to what extent the dream may also serve to
exercise embryonic tendencies). The difference is
that in play the outlet takes the form of subsidiary
action; whereas in the dream, action remains imag-
inary. But in play, imagination participates quite
as much as action; and, conversely, a dream may
become definitely active and may culminate in som-
nambulism. Numberless gradations exist. These
are plays of imagination. Art, which some theorists
compare with play and others with dreaming, is in
truth a sjaithesis of the two.
^ Bovet, Uinstinct combatif.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 77
We thus return by a devious route to Freud's
formula that the dream is the fulfilment of a wish.
Most people are inclined to object that the dream is
a manifestation of other emotions besides wishes,
including fears. Freud definitely declares that the
dream is a disguised wish fulfilment. Let us put
the matter more cautiously by saying that the dream
is a symbolical wish fulfilment, understanding by
the term ''symbolical'' the joint action of the laws
of condensation and displacement. This does not
imply that a censorship aiming at disguise is neces-
sarily at work. Nevertheless it is certain that, as-
suming the existence of these laws, the censorship
insists upon their being put into operation. In
practice, no doubt, there is an element of ''dis-
guise" in most dreams.
However there is no need to invoke the idea of
disguise to enable us to infer that a dream in which
the dreamer feels afraid, a nightmare for example,
is at bottom likewise the expression of a wish.
"The dream is the expression of a wish" and "the
dream is the expression of the affective life" are
substantially identical affirmations. The only dif-
ference is that the first formula represents a higher
degree of abstraction. Spinoza^ already looked
upon the "wish" as the essence of all the "pas-
sions" (that is to say of all the affective states) and
modern psychology, following Eibot,^ has recognised
that the tendency (of which the wish is the primor-
dial manifestation) lies at the very root of the af-
fective life.
1 Spinoza, Ethics. ^ Ribot, La psychologie des sentiments.
78 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud admits that in the dream, underlying the
conscious wish we may detect in it, there is an un-
conscious wish whose intensity has been displaced
on to the object of the superficial conscious wish.
But he adds that the unconscious wishes of which he
speaks are ^^ fixed'' routes open **once for alP' to
reactions/ Does not this amount to saying that
** unconscious wishes'' are almost identical with the
** tendencies" of the classical psychology! Now it is
quite certain that a specific wish can always be re-
garded as a manifestation of a tendency. Freud
would add that the tendencies disclosed in dreams
have been repressed. This can only be asserted
without qualification if we follow Freud in his
identification of ** repressed" with ** censored for
moral or social reasons." But the contention be-
comes strictly logical if we understand by repressed
tendency, thwarted tendency. The obstacle to free
expression may be internal or external: a conflict
of tendencies; moral grounds; the absence of the
normal object of the tendency; disillusionment; or,
furthermore, the physiological impossibility of acr-
tion (the last category includes the state of sleep
itself). It is probable enough that, among these
forms of repression, Freudian repression (by cen-
sorship) is peculiarly important. But I am sure
that we strain the facts, or at least commit our-
selves to a needless hypothesis, if we reduce all re-
pression to this form.
The Freudian concept of repression is complex.
To begin with it sometimes implies the repression
* Freud, Die Traumdeutung, p. 434, with note on this page.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 79
of an isolated experience, and sometimes that of a
tendency. It is certain, however, that the two phe-
nomena are not identical. The repression of an ex-
perience is a systematic forgetting of the past ; that
of a tendency constitutes an inhibition for the fu-
ture. Yet the two phenomena are intimately linked;
for a tendency is repressed when a number of ex-
periences relative to this tendency (a number of
sexual experiences, for instance) have been sys-
tematically repressed. But is this the only way in
which repression of a tendency can occur? May
there not be repression of a tendency which, from
the nature of the case, has never been exercised!
Besides, consciousness does not instantly compre-
hend a tendency as such ; it comprehends the isolated
experiences which nothing but a complicated process
of reflection can subsequently link up to form a
single tendency. This means that the moral and
social censorship is not competent to bring about
the repression of a tendency except in those cases
in which the tendency is a sequel of the repression
of isolated experiences.
But the concept of repression may be analysed
into distinct elements from another point of view.
For Freud, a tendency is repressed when it is :
(a) thwarted, and
(h) thrust down into the ^'unconscious''^
^Baudouin prefers to speak of the "subconscious" rather than
the "unconscious" — the term employed by Freud and Bergson.
For Baudouin's reasons for this preference, see Suggestion and
Autosuggestion, pp. 275-6. — Translators' Note.
80 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
(c) by the working of the moral and social cen-
censorship.
These three conditions are not perforce invari-
ably linked. As we have just pointed ont, a ten-
dency can be thwarted (a), by other means than
that of the censorship (c). It may be thwarted by
some external obstacle, through lack of stimulus.
This often happens with the tendencies of children
(quarrelling, the instinct of the chase, manipulating
things) when these tendencies have not been mani-
fested at a suitable moment, etc. Yet in such cases
the tendency is thrust down into the subconscious
(h). On the other hand, a tendency can be thwarted
without being for that reason thrust down into the
subconscious. Take the very simple instance of
hunger which cannot be satisfied, and which becomes
all the more insistent. A tendency that is thwarted
but not thrust down into the subconscious can in-
duce dreams — dreams in which there seems to be no
occasion for disguise. Those who have had to make
the best of the very strict diet imposed during con-
valescence from typhoid, will doubtless remember
that, as soon as the appetite began to reassert itself,
they dreamed of Gargantuan feasts. Freud him-
self refers to the occurrence of such straightforward f
dreams in children, who in the dream frankly satisfy
a thwarted wish. Again, the thwarted wish can in-
duce symbolical dreams, without being either thrust
down into the ** unconscious" or condemned by the
censorship. This s}Tiibolism has no warrant upon
the theory of purposive disguise, since we have to
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 81
do with a conscious wish. To explain it, Freud is
compelled to look below the conscious wish, in search
of a deeper wish which is unconscious and *' re-
pressed. ' * It would obviously be simpler to regard
symbolism in this case as due to the working of laws
(condensation, displacement) which always function
more or less in dreams, and which do not have the
disguising of thought as their essential purpose.
We are all the more justified in such a supposition
since we believe that we have discovered other func-
tions for these processes.
It seems to me that among the three elements (a,
b, and c) which combine to make up the Freudian
repression of a tendency, the first (the fact that a
tendency is thwarted or imperfectly satisfied) is
sufficient to induce dreams, and even symbolical
dreams. Nothing is more likely than that in most
cases the two other factors (the forcing down into
the subconscious, and censorship) are also at work.
Freud, though his theory is not perfectly sound,
may well be right in practice. But it is important
to distinguish between the various elements of '* re-
pression.''
The symbol is the natural form of the affective
imagination. When the writer of The Song of
Songs symbolically lauds all the parts of the body
of his beloved, he does not disguise the reality of his
vision ; he does not repress, but gives expression to,
what is in his mind. He expresses it symbolically
because the symbol is the natural language of strong
feeling, of an overpowering tendency. Wherever
there is a surcharge of wish, feeling, and emotion,
82 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
there the dream and the symbol make their appear-
ance. The ^'surcharge'' is the particular variety
of repression necessary and sufficient to induce
them.
While accepting, therefore, in the main, the
Freudian formula of the dream, we replace the term
**wish'* by the term ^ tendency,'' and the term ^^ re-
pressed'^ by the term *^ unsatisfied." The dream
manifests the (symbolical) realisation of an unsat-
isfied tendency,^ It should be added that what is
true of the dream is true of * * dream states ' ' in gen-
eral.
Thus the dream has been referred to the tendency,
of which it represents the surcharge. But the tend-
ency in its turn is a manifestation of instinct.
2. The Idea of an Evolution of Instinct
For a long time, instinct was dogmatically re-
garded as immutable. It was, however, a logical
development to supplement the theory of the evolu-
tion of species by the theory of the evolution of in-
stincts. If one species grows out of another, and
if each species has instincts peculiar to itself, the
inference is inevitable that instincts undergo trans-
formation. That which theory led us to expect, has
been verified by experience, and this affords impor-
tant additional confirmation of the theory of evolu-
tion.
^ Piéron (op. cit.) associates repression ("suppression," accord-
ing to Rivers) with the general biological phenomenon of inhibi-
tion.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 83
Spalding^ led the way by showing that certain
instincts make their appearance at a definite stage
in life. If, during this stage, the instinct is
thwarted and is not allowed to manifest itself, it
will subsequently fail to appear. The reader will
perhaps remember Spalding's experiments on
chicks. A chick separated from the hen for the first
days of its life does not acquire the instinct of fol-
lowing the hen, and is incapable of acquiring it later.
These experiments are in part the foundation of
William James' theory of instinct. James formu-
lates what he terms the law of transit or iness,^ to the
effect that *^many instincts ripen at a certain age
and then fade away. ' ' Thorndike ^ has generalised
this law yet further by contending that every in-
stinct thwarted by circumstances disappears. Bet-
ter known are examples of instincts which are trans-
formed in order to adapt them to new circumstances.
Since horses have been introduced into America the
American oriole has taken to pulling hairs out of
horses' tails to build nests with. Some of Forel's
experiments have revealed remarkable inhibitions
and transformations of instinct in ants."*
What concerns psychology is to discover analo-
gous phenomena in man, and we owe to William
1 Spalding, "Maemillan's Magazine," 1873, vol. xxvii, pp.
282-93. Quoted by Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals,
pp. 161-5.
2 James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., p. 398.
3 Thorndike, The Elements of Psychology, p. 188.
*Forel, Les fourmis de la Suisse, 1874.— The observations are
summarised by Romain Rolland in The Forerunners, pp. 175-84.
84. STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
James the opening of researcli in this direction.
James showed, not merely that man possesses in-
stincts, but that man has more instincts than any-
other animal. The old contrast between * intelli-
gence^' allotted to man and "instinct" allotted to
lower animals, had blinded us, so that the impor-
tance of instinct in our o\\ti species was hidden from
our eyes. As Drever shows,^ the same prejudice led
investigators, even when studying instinct in man,
to regard it rather as a physiological than as a psy-
chological phenomenon, to look at it from without
instead of from within. Towards intelligence, we
incline to take precisely the opposite attitude, a
purely psychological one ; and not until quite late did
psychologists begin to study the physiological con-
ditions of intelligence — ^being led to this by way of
pathology. A study of the psychology of instinct is
still more recent.
James drew up a nomenclature of liuman in-
stincts, and applied to most of them the law of trcm-
sitoriness, whose bearing on the problems of edu-
cation he was prompt to recognise. If a child does
not learn to ride, fish, and shoot at an age when these
instincts normally appear, it will be difficult for these
sports to be learned later in life, even in the most
favourable circumstances. Similarly, there is a spe-
cial age for the development of the taste for draw-
ing, of that for manual training, of that of collecting.
The new pedagogy, the educational method mainly
based upon the development of a child's natural in-
terests, owes a great part of its success to this prin-
1 Drever, Instinct in Man, 1917, pp. 88 et seq.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 85
ciple, for the child's spontaneous interest reveals an
instinctive need.^
While recognising that instincts can be sup-
pressed, we have also recognised that they can be
transformed. It was important to detect the latter
phenomenon in man as well as in animals. Above
all it was important to discover a tie between the sup-
pression of instincts and their transformation.
Such a tie was discovered by Freud. Bovet writes :
**Two men, one fifteen years later than the other,
have achieved a complete change in the current
psychological views of instinct. . . . James gives
the name of instinct to certain very precise reac-
tions in animals. . . . Freud, when he speaks of the
sexual instinct, envisages a group of phenomena
which are similar to those of which James speaks,
but far more intricate. His theories carry matters
considerably further, but they do not conflict with
the theories of James." ^
Freud has studied various transformations of the
sexual instinct.^ He was first led to regard this in-
stinct as made up of a number of secondary tenden-
cies (auto-erotism, homo-sexuality, algolagnia or
sado-masochism, inspectionism and exhibitionism,
etc.). These exist to some extent even in normal
persons, grouped around the main tendency, sexu-
ality properly so called. When the main tendency
is repressed, the instinct is derivatively applied to
one or more of the secondary components, and a per-
1 James, Talks to Teachers, 1899.
2 Bovet, L'instinct combatif, p. 107.
2 Freud; Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 1905.
86 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
version ensues. We are far too apt to regard per-
versions as physiological and congenital. Psycho-
analysis usually shows that they are psychological
and acquired; in these cases, the analysis cures
them.^ But in many instances the perverse tend-
ency is repressed in its turn; it may become entirely
unconscious, and show itself only in dreams. Then
the instinct seeks new derivatives. Neurosis is one
of these. Freud looks upon every neurosis as deriv-
ative, as the outcome of the refusal of a specific
perversion; hence the formula **a neurosis is the
negative of a perversion.'' But derivation may
also occur in a moral, intellectual, aesthetic, or re-
ligious direction. This is what Freud speaks of as
sublimation — a successful and beneficent derivation,
I do not agree with Freud in all the details of his
theory, but the occurrence of derivation is a fact.
The more remote the object upon which the
derivation is effected from the object towards w^hich
the instinct was primarily directed, the more ques-
tionable the interpretation may seem. A clearer
formulation is therefore requisite for the principle
of the method in accordance with which we deduce
the existence of such transformations. I incline to
formulate this principle as follows:
When we were speaking of a single affect com-
mon to all the elements of a condensation, and func-
tioning as the cause of that condensation, the phrase
was schematical. Two different objects cannot
arouse one and the same affective state; they can
^For a typical example, see Freud, Ueber die Psycliogenese
eines Falles yon weiblicher Homosexualitat, 1920.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 87
merely arouse analogous affective states. It is the
likeness of the affects which gives rise to the con-
densation. We find that condensations are effected
as concerns objects whose affective colourations
seem entirely unrelated (for example a crude sexual
desire and a purely aesthetic sentiment). Such a
condensation becomes comprehensible if we assume
that the two affective states have, unknown to the
subject, a common biological parentage. In the case
just mentioned, where we are concerned with a
crudely instinctive tendency and with a higher ten-
dency, it is only on the evolutionary plane that we
can conceive the two states to have a common bio-
logical parentage. The hypothesis of such a com-
mon parentage is verified:
1. "When the history of the subject proves that
the development of the second tendency is a sequel
to the total or partial suppression of the first;
2. When the same condensation and the same his-
torical development occur in a great many subjects.
(This item of evidence is even more convincing than
number one.)
The principle is often implicit in the reasoning
of psychoanalysts, but it is advantageous to consider
it explicitly. By its light we are repeatedly able to
verify many of the views advanced by Freud con-
cerning transformations of the sexual instinct in
the human psyche.
We see, then, that the essential phenomena of the
suppression and transformation of instinct (whose
recognition has led to the overthrow of the time-
worn dogma that instinct is immutable) are wit-
88 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
nessed in man as well as in the lower animals ; and
we see that in man the transformations of in-
stinct are remarkably numerous and plastic. More-
over, we have detected a tie between the two phe-
nomena. The suppression of an instinct is apparent
merely; and suppression is the preeminent cause of
transformation. A transformed instinct is, before
all, a thwarted instinct.
We are now in a position to understand the serv-
ices which the study of instinct, long disdained by
psychology, is called upon to render to that science.
Instinct has a psychological aspect ; and we are con-
tinually encountering instinct in the affective life,
of which it is a permanent element. The psycho-
logical importance of instinct depends upon the phe-
nomena of the transformation of instinct. Owing
to these transformations, instinct is often at work
in matters with which at first sight it seems to have
no concern.
The psychological phenomenon whose affiliation
to instinct was first grasped was emotion. William
James writes:^ ** Every object that excites an in-
stinct excites an emotion as well." When he comes
to deal with such phenomena as fear, etc., he is in
doubt whether they should be classed among emo-
tions, or among instincts. The peripheral theory of
the emotions,^ supported by James, is closely con-
nected with this identification of emotion and instinct.
Inasmuch as a system of motor reactions underlies
^ James, The Piineiples of Psychology, vol. ii., p. 442.
2 Cf. Baudouin, Suggestion et Autosuggestion, pp. 47-51; Eng-
lish translation, pp. 61-66.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 89
instinct, it is reasonable to enquire whether the
motor reactions are not the self-sufficing cause of the
emotion.
From this outlook, emotion has been regarded as
the ^^psychological aspecf or '^affective aspect'' of
instinct. Such is the formula employed by Mc-
Dougall. According to McDougall, the emotion of
fear is the psychological translation of the instinct
of flight.^ This view has been criticised by Thorn-
dike, who would prefer to restrict the term **pure
instincts'' to denote ** specific responses to specific
situations, ' ' ^ without any bearing upon possible
emotional accompaniments. Thorndike's position is
hardly tenable, and Drever ^ has categorically re-
asserted the thesis of James and McDougall.
Larguier des Bancels will not consent to regard emo-
tion as the psychological aspect of instinct ; he says
that emotion is ^ instinct which has gone wrong."*
He gives the following example: '*We obey an in-
stinct when we get out of the way of a carriage on
hearing the sound of its approach. We are a prey
to emotion when we stand in its way with feet rooted
to the ground, or when we dance about in front of
it." In like manner he says, a man who is guided
by the *^ combative instinct" makes ready to deliver
a blow, remaining cool and self-possessed; whereas
anger makes him lose his head. This distinction,
like Thorndike's, is difficult to maintain; it serves
1 McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 49.
2 Thomdike, Educational Psychology.
^ Drever, Instinct in Man, pp. 150 et seq.
* Larguier des Bancels, op. cit., p. 240.
90 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
mainly to draw attention to the disorders of instinct.
Nevertheless, although the formula ^^ emotion is in-
stinct gone wrong'' is unquestionably an exaggera-
tion, it is suggestive, for it emphasises the fact that
the affective aspect of the phenomenon develops at
the cost of- the active aspect. We have had occasion
to note this before. A certain amount of emotion is
the normal accompaniment of instinct ; but the emo-
tion develops at the expense of the instinct properly
so called. For good or for ill, and whether or not
the emotion be instinct gone wrong, violent emotion
is a transformation, an evolution, of instinct. The
evolution presupposes that part of the instinct has
been diverted from its primary function. Here we
are in line with the observations of Eomanes, who
notes that the emotional manifestations accompany-
ing instinct grow more intense as we rise in the ani-
mal scale, and that they attain their maximum in
man.^
But the psychological evolution of instinct does
not end with emotion. This is not the only psycho-
logical aspect of instinct; we may call it the acute
psychological aspect. The enduring psychological
aspect of instinct is what in Eibot's psychology is
termed tendency. Emotion is manifested when a
tendency has a violent encounter with its object. In
default of this shock, a tendency does not manifest
itself by emotions, but through other forms of the
affective life (feelings, passions) ; for the tendency,
as we have pointed out above, underlies the whole of
the affective life. It follows, then, that the affective
^ Romanes, Animal Intelligence, pp. 155, 270, etc.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 91
life as a whole is based upon instinct. The classical
distinction between primitive tendencies and derived
tendencies (or acquired tendencies) thus becomes
perfectly clear. Primitive tendencies are the ex-
pression of instinct pure and simple; derived ten-
dencies are the outcome of the transformations that
instinct undergoes in the individual, especially when
instinct has been thwarted. These tendencies may
represent a derivation of instinct towards new ends,
moral, assthetic, or spiritual; bearing this in mind,
we can easily understand why James Ward assimi-
lates instinct to talent, regarding talent as an in-
stinct in process of formation.^ The interest mani-
fested for any particular object is the preeminent
sign of a tendency, whether primitive or derived.
In either case we have to do with a force that is
instinctive in its origin; and the new pedagogy has
good reason for assigning a biological rôle to inter-
est, and for considering that educationists should
pay particular attention to this matter. Finally,
when James tells us that man has more instincts
than any other animal, we must understand here by
the term * instinct,'' numerous tendencies, increas-
ingly psychological in character, which can undergo
development in man, but which result from the evo-
lution of a much smaller number of crude instincts.
From the theoretical outlook, the number of these
crude instincts may perhaps be very much restricted,
for it is doubtful apriori whether every primitive
instinct is capable of the same evolution. The idea
that the affective life, including the higher feelings,
1 Ward, Psychological Principles, 1918, p. 449.
92 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
represents an evolution of instincts , must be accepted
as a general proposition. It is a natural deduction
from the theory of evolution, and people will become
familiarised with it just as they have become famili-
arised with the idea of the evolution of species.
Hardly anyone is now unwilling to admit that man
is descended from animal ancestors; why, then,
should anyone take offence at the idea that our high-
est feelings arise out of instincts ? But although the
general notion of this evolution must be accepted,
we are not yet in a position to work the idea out in
detail.
We spoke of a possible genesis of feelings from a
restricted number of instincts. Freud, in this con-
nection, attaches especial importance to the sexual
instinct, and that is what has made many people find
the theory repugnant. As we shall see shortly, other
instincts besides the sexual can and do play their
part. Freud does not deny it. Moreover, as Pfister
well says, it is as absurd to be angry with Freud
for his outlook as it would have been to blame Chris-
topher Columbus for having discovered America
only, without discovering Australia and the North
and South Poles. Not merely was the line taken
by Freu.d the boldest one, and also the one which it
was the most urgent to take; but in addition it is
easy on theoretical grounds to demonstrate that the
sexual instinct must have had exceptional impor-
tance in the genesis of our feelings. Here are three
propositions the truth of which it is very difficult
to deny.
1. The feelings represent an evolution of crude
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 93
instincts. (This is the conclusion to wMch we have
just been led.)
2. The instincts which evolve are preeminently
instincts that have been repressed or thwarted.
(This was proved above.)
3. The sexual instinct is one of the two or three
of the most potent among the instincts, and it is
also one of those upon which the greatest number
of repressions are imposed in social and civilised
life. (The facts are obvious.)
Anyone who accepts these three propositions will
have to accept, as a perhaps unexpected but neces-
sary corollary when they are juxtaposed, the con-
tention that the evolution of the thwarted sexual in-
stinct has a preponderating importance in the gene-
sis of our feelings.^ I do not think that Freud's
main idea goes far beyond the terms of this propo-
sition.
Obviously there is no reason for neglecting the
part played by the other instincts. In the case of
several of them, we shall find that there are certain
transformations easy to follow, similar transforma-
tions to those which Freud has described in the case
of the sexual instinct.
Speaking generally, we can distinguish two kinds
of transformation :
1. Sometimes the thwarted instinct seeks deriva-
tives in actions different from those towards which
1 The same affirmation may be found in the writings of an
author who is by no means an adherent of psychoanalysis. Cf.
Paulhan, Les transformations sociales des sentiments, 1920, p. 151.
94 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
it was primarily directed, but it remains essentially
active. (Example, the combative instinct finds its
derivative in sport.)
2. Sometimes the instinct is satisfied with ** re-
gression*' (Freud), ** introversion" (Jung), **ob-
jectivation" (Bovet), in the affective and imagina-
tive world. (Example, the combative instinct finds
its derivative in epic imagination.)
The distinction corresponds to that between play
and dreaming; moreover, as in the cases of play and
dreaming, intermediate forms, mixed derivatives, are
met with.
In either case the derivative is formed as the
sequel of the displacement of affective stress upon
an object different from that towards which the ten-
dency was primarily directed. But whereas in
dreaming and in play the displacement was momen-
tary, here it is persistent, and the tendency has
definitively secured a new object. Moreover, the
analysis of displacement in dreams has thrown an
unexpected light upon the process of derivation.
Derivation is the projection upon a dynamic plane
of that which is displacement upon a static plane.
Unquestionably derivation is always heralded by
displacements which have vacillated a little before
undergoing fixation. Here we approach a new
aspect (which has been foreshadowed) of the func-
tion of play in dreams. Dreaming appeared to us
at first, in adults at any rate, to be an outlet for
an unemployed instinct; whereas the play of chil-
dren seemed to us to be, in addition, the exercise
of an embryonic instinct. But a derivative which is
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 95
in course of development is, strictly speaking, an
embryonic tendency, an evolving instinct.
In certain cases, the displacement that occurs in a
dream appears quite plainly to be an embryonic ten-
dency, playing, vacillating exercising itself. It is
in such cases that we are eiititled to speak of dreams
that point out the way. The subject will eventually
follow a path which has appeared to him in a dream.
We shall find instances of such dreams in several
of our subjects. Gerard, an adolescent, exhibits a
vacillating sublimation ; this vacillation finds expres-
sion in dream V; the tendency towards Catholicism
which manifests itself in the dream will eventually,
in this subject, become a real tendency, a wish to
be converted. Eoger has, towards the close of the
analysis (from dream XIX onwards), several
dreams which point out the way, and in which a
budding sublimation is sketched. But the most
typical case is perhaps that of Jeanne, who vacil-
lates between aesthetic sublimation and moral-social
sublimation, and who plays upon these two possi-
bilities (in dreams IX and X). It is thus that a
child will play at different trades or professions be-
fore feeling that its choice of a life occupation has
been made. Such dreams are entitled to be termed
dreams that point out the way, inasmuch as the ten-
dencies and the conflicts of tendency which come to
light in the dreams are as a rule more or less sub-
conscious, and the analysis of these dreams helps
the subject to become aware of his own trends. I
may adduce the example of a young man who during
childhood had little predilection for combative ex-
96 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
ploits but who was nevertheless continually dream-
ing that he was a soldier. When he was nineteen,
this tendency entered his waking consciousness, and
he adopted a military career, for which he had long
been preparing in his dreams just as others prepare
for such a career in play.
In view of these facts it is easy to realise that the
dream-play which is termed ^*art" has the same
function for humanity at large that dreaming and
play have for the individual. Art is not merely an
outlet for unemployed tendencies; it is also a play,
an exercise, in which these tendencies seek new ob-
jects, in which they imagine the diverse possibilities
of their future evolution. Might we not define the
higher art as a dream which points out the way to
mankind in search of its goal?
3, The Genealogy of Tendencies
When there repeatedly occurs a condensation of
images tinged with affects which to consciousness
seem to have no connection with one another, there
are, as we have learned, grounds for supposing that
these affective states are really akin. Imagination
is based on affectivity, affectivity on instinct. Just
as the condensation of different images commonly
results from their being tinged with kindred affects,
so the condensation of different affective states is
the outcome (if we may use the term) of the common
instinctive ** parentage" of the affects. These two
principles correspond to the two successive cate-
gories of psychoanalysis. In the dream, a conden-
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 97
sation of images is the only immediate datum from
which ive can start. Sometimes this condensation
is explained by a kinship of the first degree, an af-
fective kinship between the images. Sometimes we
must go deeper for an explanation ; there is diversity
not only between the images but also between the
concomitant affective states, and the uniting element
must be sought in the instinctive parentage of the
affective states. This latter form of kinship is not
usually within the realm of consciousness.
But here again, schematically considered, there
are two alternatives. The affective states may rep-
resent different stages of evolution (a crude ten-
dency and a higher tendency), and it is only under
the evolutionary form that we can conceive their
kinship. Of this nature is the case considered above,
when we took as an example the condensation of a
sexual tendency with an aesthetic tendency. If there
is kinship between these two tendencies, it is because
some of the latter represent an evolution of some of
the elements of the former. In the alternative case,
the two affective states which undergo condensation
do not obviously belong to different stages of evolu-
tion. For instance, we may be concerned with two
sentiments developed by civilisation, such as the
filial sentiment and the conjugal sentiment; or with
two crude tendencies, such as the combative and the
sexual respectively. Again, when we have to do
with developed sentiments, the solution of the dif-
ference may take place on the affective plane. In
certain subjects there is a definite likeness, a like-
ness of which the subject is aware, between the con-
98 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
jugal sentiment and the filial sentiment. *^You are
my sister and my mother as well as my beloved,"
says Don Carlos in Verhaeren's play Philippe IL
Are we then to be satisfied with the affective likeness,
and are we to say that in such subjects one senti-
ment serves as symbol of the other — and if so, which
is the symbol ! Are we to look for a biological foun-
dation, to say that one of the tendencies has devel-
oped out of the other, and that filial affection con-
tains the germs of conjugal affection? If we have
to do with two crude instincts, are they derived one
from the other, and how; are they derived from a
common source; is their biological tie used by the
dream only as a pretext, so that one serves as sym-
bol of the other — and, once more, which is the sym-
bol?
This way of stating the problem gives us some
idea of its intricacy. Certain feelings, certain in-
stincts, form condensations which are encountered
unmistakably in a great number of persons. It is
manifest that the feelings are akin, that the instincts
are akin. But what is the nature of the kinship?
It is here that the question becomes involved. We
shall see a little more clearly if we bear the follow-
ing principles in mind :
1. In every *'symbolisation," as previously
pointed out, we must be extremely circumspect in
deciding which of the terms symbolises the other,
and which is the essential element. Our judgment
as to what is symbol and what symbolised is a very
subjective affair. We shall often find it more pru-
dent to be satisfied with noting that there is a rela-
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 99
tionship between the different terms, and to refrain
from specifying precisely what the relationship is.
2. This relationship, in all cases, and even when
it exhibits itself as an affective likeness of which the
subject is aware, can in the last analysis be reduced
to a biological kinship (instinctive parentage), and
can always be looked upon as a function of evolu-
tion. But the relationship does not per se tell us
anything as to the nature of this evolution.
3. The nature of the evolution can only be de-
cided by historical considerations. Thus alone can
we determine whether we have to do with an evolu-
tion of tendencies acquired by the individual, or
with an evolution of instincts proper to the species.
Psychoanalysis leads us to the following concep-
tion. The affective-instinctive forces, in short the
tendencies, which work in the depths of our being,
are interrelated in ways analogous to those which
the theory of evolution has elucidated as existing
between species. They are blood-relations; they
grow out of one another. Below, there are certain
crude instincts; above, we have the burgeoning of
the higher feelings. But this statement is a mere
skeleton. We must clothe it with flesh; we must
show how the tendencies are akin, distinguishing
between near relationships and distant ; we must, in
a word, draw up the genealogical tree of our ten-
dencies.
To put the matter more clearly, let us follow up
the comparison with' the origin of species. The
reader will remember that the biological theory of
100 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
evolution both generally and as regards details is
logically grounded upon the data furnished by three
sciences : comparative anatomy ; paleontology ; and
embryology. Comparative anatomy detects the re-
markable homologies between the organs of differ-
ent species; finding, for instance, an arm in the
skeleton of a bird's wing. Paleontology discloses
the order of appearance of the various species in
geological history, and thus elucidates kinship by
descent. Embryology shows that the individual de-
velopment of the higher beings from germ-cell to
adult is an epitome of the development of species
revealed by paleontology. Psychoanalysis to-day,
in its study of tendencies, is in much the same posi-
tion as comparative anatomy in relation to the study
of species; psychoanalysis is able to detect remark-
able kinships between tendencies. In addition, in
certain cases, psychoanalysis is able to secure data
analogous to those furnished by embryology, as
when it elucidates the history and the transforma-
tions of a subject's tendencies. Finally, with Jung
and his school, psychoanalysis undertakes stupen-
dous excavations in the paleontological strata of
primitive thought and the *^ collective unconscious";
it aspires to exhume the fabulous monsters which are
supposed to enjoy a revived existence to-day in the
infantile states of the human mind.^ But this ^ ^psy-
chic paleontology" and ^^ psychic embryology" are
^ An interesting monograph upon this topic is Aurel Kolnai's
recently published work, Psychoanalysis and Sociology. But, for
the reasons given in the text, this author's conclusions must be
accepted with reserve.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 101
still in the faltering stage of early childhood, and
we have often to be content with the ^^comparative
anatomy'' of tendencies. The last, even, exhibits
many gaps. This is why great caution is needed
when we are constructing a genealogical tree of ten-
dencies. In the conceptual sphere, the idea of their
evolution is forced upon us ; as a fact, we can verify
such an evolution in many instances, and we owe the
possibility of this verification to psychoanalysis; but
there is a great deal more work to be done before
all the details of the genealogy can be known to us.
Manifestly, then, in this domain there is plenty of
scope for conflicting interpretations. We must not
therefore refrain from interpretations ; they are es-
sential to the exposition and linking of the phe-
nomena. But we must never forget that these inter-
pretations contain large hypothetical elements. If
psychoanalysts would always bear this fact in mind,
they would not furnish us with the spectacle de-
scribed by Claparède: ^^They sometimes confound
hypotheses with facts, ignore the need for systematic
doubt, and mistake a theory for a creed. Hence
they suffer from intestine dissensions. They are
split up into petty, warring chapels, hermetically
sealed to the profane ; and they enter their respective
chapels with a mystic air of self-satisfied superiority,
as if they were the hierophants of some esoteric doc-
trine.— Such are the foibles of mankind. . . ."^
We have already noted the exceptional importance
attached by Freud to transformations of the sexual
instinct, regarded as the product of numerous com-
1 Claparède, Introduction to Freud's La psychanalyse, p. 21.
102 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
ponents capable of independent variation and of un-
equal degrees of modification. According to this
view, an evolution of the sexual instinct underlies
many of the higher manifestations of the mind.
Energy that was primarily sexual is thus looked
upon as taking the form of a stream which divides
into a number of branches, subsequently perhaps
coalescing and separating once more. If one branch
is dammed, the obstructed portion of the stream flows
into lateral channels, and may there give rise to new
derivatives which are sometimes of great moral and
social value. To give expression to this idea of the
conservation of a stream of energy, quantitative in
character, Freud uses the term libido.^ Its meaning
is not very strictly defined, and its significance has
been rendered all the more obscure inasmuch as vari-
ous disciples have employed it in divergent senses.
As Freud himself uses the word, * libido" would
seem to be a designedly plastic term to denote an
essentially mobile reality. Even though it be true
that libido does not always signify precisely the
same thing, we must not bear a grudge against
Freud for this, seeing that the libido is a real entity
in process of evolution. Jung shows that the con-
cept has undergone expansion in proportion as
Freud has grasped the existence of more numerous
relationships between the sexual elements and other
elements.^ If a simple definition of libido is possible,
it will run as follows : Libido is sexual energy consid-
^ Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexiialtheorie.
2 Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, p. 124; The Psy-
chology of the Unconscious, pp. 143-4.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 103
ered from the outlook of its faculty for undergoing
transformation and evolution. In this sense we may
say that the ** libido'' participates in this or that
higher sentiment, just as we may say that Plato's
skeleton retains a vestige of the simian tail. We
are concerned here with a developmental relation-
ship and not with identity, and this is why Freud
can propound the paradoxical formula of a ^* sexu-
ality independent of the reproductive instinct."^
Nevertheless, as Claparède ^ points out, there remain
certain obscurities in the concept of libido. But this
much is certain, that it is unjust to charge Freud
with finding libido in everything, and with reducing
the whole human mind to an evolution of the sexual.
In a letter to Claparède (1921) he writes categori-
cally concerning this matter :
*^I have repeated and asserted as plainly as pos-
sible apropos of transference neuroses (Uehertra-
gungsneurosen), that I have dra^vn a distinction be-
tween the Sexualtriehe ^ and the Ichtriehe; * and that
for me libido denotes only the energy of the former,
of the Seamultriehe. It is Jung and not I who makes
the libido equivalent to the instinctive urge of all
the mental faculties, and who combats the idea of the
sexual nature of the libido. ... As far as I myself
am concerned I fully recognise the existence of the
group of the Ichtriehe, and of everything which the
mental life owes to these instincts. But this latter
1 Freud, La psychanalyse, p. 56 ; see also Introductory Lectures
on Psychoanalysis, p. 276.
2 Cf. the discussion in Freud, La psychanalyse, p. 70.
^ Sexual instincts.
* Ego instincts.
104 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
point is ignored by the general public; it is purposely
hidden from the general public. The same sort of
thing often happens when my theory of dreams is
being expounded. I have never contended that every
dream expresses the realisation of a sexual wish,
and I have frequently affirmed the contrary. But
all to no avail, for people go on saying the same
thing over and over again." ^
We shall shortly have to consider Jung's ideas,
but we must deal first of all with Adler's theory.
It is grafted upon Freud's reserves in favour of the
Ichtriebe. Adler, who is said to have been Freud's
first disciple, applies his master's principles to the
instinct of self-preservation, or rather to the instinct
of the expansion of the personality (an instinct
analogous to what Nietzsche termed the will-to-
power). But his application of them is so drastic
that he attributes to this instinct for power many
of the results attributed by Freud to the sexual in-
stinct; consequently the same phenomenon could be
interpreted quite differently by Freud and by Adler.
In imaginative creations Adler discerns compensa-
tion ^ for a real inferiority ; the development of a
mental tendency may manifest itself as the fixation
of such a compensation for a feeling of organic in-
feriority. (This recalls the case of a stammerer who
dreams of becoming an orator, and who, if he be
a Demosthenes, may actually become an orator.)
^ Quoted in Freud, La psychanalyse, p. 70.
2 Adler, Ueber den nervosen Cbarakter, 1919, pp. 24 et seq.;
The Neurotic Constitution, pp. 18 et seq.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 105
In addition a neurosis is a means of dominating the
entourage/ A boy who is being coddled for a sore
throat may develop symptoms of asthma in order to
keep everyone at his service.^ Or, again, a mother
may pamper her children in the unconscious deter-
mination to tyrannise over them.
Adler goes further, and whenever he encounters
sexuality he regards it as a symbol of power. The
sexual allusions of neuropaths are purely symbolic
(sind nur ein Gleichnis).^ The sexual attitude of
these patients is the outcome of their feeling of
weakness, and of their dread of normal sexual rela-
tions, in w^hich they run the risk of encountering
'*a partner more powerful than themselves." They
therefore simulate a perversion ; or they shun sexu-
ality altogether: or, conversely, they become '^Don
Juans" or '* light women" for fear of a ^* unique
partner" who would be likely to subjugate them.
A woman, again, may manifest her will-to-power by
falling in love with a man who is weakly or an in-
valid, and owing to repression her true motive will
assume the mark of compassion.* In consequence
of the will-to-power, a neuropathic woman may wish
to play a virile rôle, and may repudiate motherhood,
or the sexual life in its entirety (a case in which
Freud would have spoken of homosexuality). The
menopause is characterised by an increase in neu-
1 Adler, Ueber den nervosen, Charakter, 1919, p. 35; English
version, p. 13.
2 Ibid., p. 130 ; English version, p. 138.
3 Ibid., p. 135; English version, p. 144.
"^Ibid., p. 113; English version, p. 119.
106 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
rotic symptoms because it tends to arouse a feeling
of inferiority.^
Adler, like Freud, is a sagacious and at times a
pitiless psychologist. He is in line with a number of
caustic students of human nature such as La
Rochefoucauld and Nietzsche, who delight in detect-
ing *' egoism'' and the ** will-to-power" behind every
human feeling. But in Adler 's case this view does
not lead to pessimism, any more than in Freud's,
for psychoanalysts do not look upon sexuality or
egoism as prisons from which there is no escape.
Freud tells us that sexuality can undergo sublima-
tion. So can the will-to-power. We must recog-
nise the parallelism between Adler and Freud in
spite of the differences between them. Freud con-
trasts the *^ pleasure principle" with the ^^ reality
principle." The neuropath is out of harmony with
the real because his only guide is the ^* pleasure
principle. ' ' In like manner, for Adler, the principle
of ** power" is essentially normal; but where the
neuropath goes astray is that he becomes obsessed
by this as his only principle, that he makes of it his
'* guiding fiction," forgetting the real. What is true
of the power principle for the individual, is true
likewise for the group, and Adler writes these vigor-
ous words at the beginning of the second edition of
his book The Neurotic Constitution : *^In the interval
between the two editions of this work, the world
war and its sequels have intervened ; there has been
the most terrible of collective neuroses into which
our neuropathic civilisation has hurled itself in vir-
^ Adler, Ueber den nervosen, Charakter, p. 75; English ver-
sion, p. 76.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 107
tue of its mil-to-power and its policy of self-asser-
tion. . . . This reveals itself as tlie elemental out-
come of the lust for dominion which has been every-
where let loose, stifling or artificially misusing the
undying sentiment for human solidarity."
The quotation is enough to show how much faith
in humanity there can be in men who are neverthe-
less dominated by pitiless realism. For Freud, as
for Adler, the principle of neurosis is essentially an
egoistic principle. The former speaks of the pleas-
ure principle, and the latter of the power principle.^
In both cases there is maladaptation to the real,
which is also the social. In both cases, the task of
psychoanalysis is to reestablish the adaptation, and
in so doing it does altruistic work. It is an educa-
tion in confraternity (Erziehwig zur Gemeinschaft).^
The foregoing considerations will facilitate the
reader's understanding of the attempt made by the
Zurich School of psychoanalysts, and notably by
Jung, to effect a synthesis of the respective theories
of Freud and Adler ; and also to understand why it
is that in this synthesis, which stresses the traits
common to the two Viennese psychologists, the em-
phasis has generally been laid upon the idealistic
aspect of psychoanalysis, upon its rôle of labourer
on behalf of altruism.
But great as is the interest of the common features
of the two doctrines, the differences between Freud
1 It is amusing to note that the names of these two men of
Bcience are symbolical of their respective theories, for "Freude"
signifies "joy" or "pleasure/' and "Adler" signifies "eagle."
(This is a tip for those who like mnemonics!)
2 Op. cit., Preface.
108 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
and Adler are no less interesting. These differ-
ences, and, above all, tlie fact that Adler sees a sym-
bol where Freud sees a reality (and conversely),
confirm the difficult primary theory which we formu-
lated above. A judgment of value, we said, mark-
edly subjective in character, decides the important
point, decides Avhat is the **symboP' and what is
the thing ^* symbolised." A symbol can be inter-
preted in various ways, even though an objective
relationship exists between the elements of which
it is composed.
Jung's proposed synthesis is founded mainly upon
two principles :
(1) the expansion of the concept of the
*^ libido";
(2) the distinction between the * introvert"
and the ** extrovert. "
1. The expansion of the concept of the libido was
pointed out in Freud's letter to Claparede. Jung,
showing that Freud has progressively expanded the
significance of the term *' libido," considers that this
expansion ought to be carried yet further. He ap-
plies the concept so as to include every tendency,
not excepting those which Freud speaks of as the
group of ^^ego instincts."^ The term libido as
employed by Jung is likewise somewhat obscure, but
we can use the same definition that we used to ex-
^ Jung, Wandlmigen und Symbole der Libido, Part II, Chapter
II; Psychology of the Unconscious, Part II, Chapter II.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 109
plain the Freudian significance of the term if we
substitute the word ' instinctive '' for the word
*^ sexual." Then, libido is instinctive energy con-
sidered from the outlook of its faculty for wider-
going transformation and evolution. This concep-
tion implies the fundamental unity of all the in-
stinctive energies, thus recalling, in the mental
sphere, the general notion of energy in the physical
sphere. It is, however, easy to see that such a use
of the term libido veils a hypothesis, which is almost
a metaphysical hypothesis. But the expansion of
the concept has certainly the merit of enabling Jung
to harmonise Adler's terminology with Freud's.
2. This '^libido,'' this mental energy (which has
been compared to the ** vital impetus" [élan vital]
of Bergson), is both centripetal and centrifugal,
tends both towards the ego and towards the outer
world. Here we have two compensatory functions.
According as one or other predominates, the subject
is an introvert or an extrovert. The introvert will
be mainly a thinker, the extrovert will be mainly a
man or woman of feeling or of action. The '^Ich-
triebe" dominate the introvert, whereas the *^Sex-
naltriebe" dominate the extrovert; thus to the intro-
vert Adler's principle mainly applies, and to the
extrovert Freud's principle mainly applies.^
Jung's conclusion is broadly tolerant: ^*Up to a
certain point, the sexual theory is perfectly correct,
but it is one-sided. We should consequently be
^ This distinction forms the basis of Jung's book, Psycholo-
gisehen Typen, 1921. — Jung has also expounded the idea briefly
in French, Contribution à Tétude des types psychologiques.
110 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
equally wrong were we to reject it outright or to
accept it as universally valid.''
For Jung, the psychoanalytic method **is based
upon the theory of the two types'' (of introvert and
extrovert). The neuroses and the psychoses corre-
spond to an exaggeration of one function or the
other (extroversion in hysteria, introversion in neu-
rasthenia and in dementia prsecox). To cure these
patients we must develop in them the function which
they lack. This can be done, for the lack is appar-
ent merely; the missing function is repressed into
the subconscious.
Jung's synthesis is a praiseworthy effort to unify
psychoanalysis, to subsume under one head theories
which might seem conflicting. We owe much to
Jung for his specialist studies, and above all for his
application of the Freudian method to the psychoses,
but we find it necessary to criticise his attempted
synthesis. This theory is so generalised that its
outlines grow hazy. The distinction between the
two types is nothing more than a convenient formula
which we must not be unduly ready to accept as cor-
responding to an absolute reality. As for Jung's
concept of the ** libido," this is even more impal-
pable than Freud's; it has become protean. Such
extremely general notions are by no means futile,
but we have to ask ourselves whether they possess
the qualities requisite for scientific terminology.
jHere we touch the root of the matter. Jung's syn-
} thesis is philosophical rather than scientific. Broad
syntheses are excellent when we wish to summarise
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 111
the present state of knowledge, but they are not
favourable to the process of research.
From the scientific point of view the question
arises whether it would not be better to harmonise
the respective theories of Adler and Freud upon a
platform purposively analytical. The construc-
tions of Freud and of Adler are already vast syn-
theses open to criticism for their tendency towards
systematic generalisations — and this tendency itself
explains their conflict. Is it the best corrective to
subsume these two theories in a synthesis yet more
titanic? Perhaps it is, for the philosopher. But
would not the psychologist be well advised to try the
opposite method?
Psychoanalysis has already a superabundance of
ambitious generalisations. We must remember that
this branch of science has hitherto been mainly de-
veloped in the Teutonic lands, and that the German
spirit has ever been more inclined towards meta-
physics than psychology, towards synthesis than
analysis. Consequently, by the irony of fate, at
each step forward psycho-analysis has to an increas-
ing extent run the danger of becoming mefaphysico-
synthesis. I do not know that this need be regretted.
Owing to the nature of the object of study there was
a risk at first that psychoanalysis would lead to a
collection of disconnected facts; and the synthetic
spirit was requisite before the science could become
the imposing force it now is. But given the requisite
synthetic foundation and now that the vast design
has been traced, we shall find it advantageous to
work upon a smaller scale. Freud, a disciple of
112 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Charcot and Bernlieim, expected great things of
France — just as formerly Nietzsche, the forerunner
of psychoanalysis, had expected great things of her.
*^ Freud had imagined,'' writes Claparède, ^'that the
French mind, noted for its versatility, would be
readier than the German mind to understand the
finer shades of the mental life and the hidden impli-
cations of the subconscious; he expected to receive,
across the frontier, if not the approval, at least the
attention which his compatriots refused with scant
courtesy. . . . Yet, strange to say, the French have
been the very last to interest themselves in his
work. ' ' ^
At length, however, the hour has come, and we are
entitled to expect that the French spirit will g-uide
psychoanalysis in the genuinely ** analytical' ' direc-
tion desiderated above. Such a movement is already
manifest, not only in French Switzerland, but also in
Britain. It is time that the movement should be-
come fully conscious of its own trend.
Psychoanalysis is an evolutionary theory of in-
stinct; it ought to become an evolutionary theory of
the instincts. Implicit in this formula is the dif-
ference between the two outlooks. Instead of gen-
eralising the term * libido" to denote so comprehen-
sive an object as * instinctive energy," we shall pre-
fer to speak of a * libido" peculiar to each instinct.
Better still, perhaps, we shall prefer to abandon the
concept altogether; or at least to surrender it to
philosophy, where it may have a useful part to play
^ Claparède, Introduction to Freud's La psychanalyse, p. 6.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 113
(only, in that case, we may have a preference in
France for the term ^^elan vital" — vital impetus).
We shall carefully consider the suggestion of
Claparède, who wishes to replace the term libido by
the term interest. It is not simply a question of
words. '^Libido'' is tendency looked upon as en-
ergy. *^ Interest" is a positive psychological fact,
one which we are entitled to look upon as the sign
of the tendency. There is no danger that the con-
ception of interest will lead us astray in metaphysi-
cal and mystical directions. Furthermore the advo-
cates of 'libido" conceive of it as a uniform energy,
as being in the singular number; whereas in speech
and thought we are accustomed to deal with * inter-
ests" in the plural, and not with ^ interest per se."
We have an ^^ interest" for hunting, dancing, study;
each tendency has its appropriate * interest." In-
terest is defined as a function of the object of the
tendency; whereas libido demands to be defined per
se. Our view is that interest undergoes displace-
ment, that it is transferred to new objects, that it
evolves. We may say that a child concentrates in-
terest on play ; a youth or a girl on study or amuse-
ment; an adult on business, ambition, ideas. Thus
the term ** interest" is both supple and precise; it
fulfils our desideratum; it is a psychological and
analytical notion. Whether we adopt the word or
not, we can in any case accept Claparède 's outlook:
*' Psychoanalysis has contributed great and splendid
truths to psychology. It would be a pity if the ad-
vance of the science were still to be hampered by an
abstruse theory of the libido. Hoping to avoid this
114 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
shoal, I have endeavoured to give the theory the
form which seems to me the only legitimate one in
the present state of our biological and psychological
knowledge. No other form is legitimate, because no
other form is intelligible. ' ' ^
Once more recalling Descartes' famous rule, let us
'* divide'' our topic. We certainly shall not forget
that instincts, like species, are akin; and that in-
stincts, like species, attach to a primitive unity.
But what should we think of a man of science who,
being a theist, was satisfied to explain every natural
phenomenon simply by the words, ^'this comes from
God"; or of an evolutionist who was satisfied to
explain the origin of every living being by the for-
mula, *Hhis is a development from the primitive
unicellular organism"! The ^ libido" sometimes
gives us the impression of being an explanation of
this kind. ^*This is the outcome of the libido."
What interests science is to know how it *4s the
outcome."
We must therefore study each instinct separately,
doing our utmost to trace its possible metamor-
phoses in the human psyche, and without denying
that the higher manifestations of this psyche may
be the outcome of several instincts. Not only shall
we decline to have forced upon us an alternative
between an ** explanation by the sexual instinct" or
an '^explanation by the instinct for power"; we
shall be prepared to take into account, not merely
^ Claparède, Supplementary note to Freud's La psychanalyse,
p. 72.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 115
both these instincts, but, if need be, a number of
others as well.
This analytical study has begun. Several British
psychoanalysts, and in especial Rivers and Mac-
Curdy,^ have applied Freudian methods to the diag-
nosis and treatment of war neuroses. Their descrip-
tion runs on parallel lines with that of Freud ; but in
their view, in what they term war neuroses, the in-
stinct of self-preservation takes the place given by
Freud to the sexual instinct in the ** peace neu-
roses.'' In war, it is this instinct of self-preserva-
tion which mainly tends to be repressed by the cen-
sorship, here taking the form of the conventions of
military life. War neurosis may manifest itself as
** anxiety neurosis"; and this, in war patients as in
peace patients, is the indication of an acute conflict
between what has been repressed and the conscious-
ness.^
An interesting perspective opens out to investi-
gators in this field. We may expect that there will
shortly be issued a series of monographs upon the
different instincts. Pierre Bovet has led the way
in his study of the combative instinct.^ He studies
^Rivers, Instinct and the Unconscious, 1920; The Repression
of War Experiences, 1918. — MaeCurdy, War Neuroses, 1918. —
Cf. also Culpin, Psychoneiiroses of War and Peace, 1920. This
author inclines more towards Adler's outlook than towards
Freud's. — Consult also Ernest Jones, War Shock and Freud's
Theory of the Neuroses, in Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1918; also
Eder, War Shock, 1917.
2 Lépine, in his Troubles mentaux de guerre, also lays stress
upon the kinship between the "anxiety states" of war neuroses,
and states of conflict.
3 Bovet, L'instinct combatif, 1917.
116 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the apparent suppressions of this instinct, which
arise, either because the instinct has not been exer-
cised during the stage of development when it nor-
mally appears, or because it has been thwarted later
in life. The author goes on to show the transfor-
mations that result from these apparent suppres-
sions. The instinct finds derivatives in sport, se-
cures expression in the study of history, or is sub-
limated in moral strife.^ Condensations are effected
among the images corresponding to the various
stages of the evolution of the instinct, leading to
the use of fighting metaphors by the derivative or
sublimated instinct, which thereby betrays its origin.
Loyola, having been a soldier, becomes a soldier of
God, and founds the Society of Jesus upon the model
of an army. The Salvation Army is a still more
typical instance.^
The remarks made incidentally by certain authors
apropos of one instinct or another could serve as
the starting point for such monographs. For in-
stance Larguier des Bancels, having enumerated the
primitive instincts, goes on to say: ^^The various
tendencies we have just been reviewing have a much
wider influence than is obvious at first sight. We
must not forget that they underlie a great number
of complex feelings. Disdain, contempt, and aloof-
ness, are the wrappings for repulsion and disgust.
We may say the same thing of hatred." ^
Is contempt merely the *Svrapping'' of disgust?
^Bovet, L'instinct combatif, pp. 119 et seq.
2 Ibid., p. 157.
^ Larguier des Bancels, op. cit., p. 213.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 117
Could we not more appropriately speak of an ^^evo-
lution" of disgust. The same author, discussing
the complementary instincts of curiosity and fear,
writes : ''The prestige of mystery, by which so many
adults are still influenced, is compounded of fear
and curiosity." ^
Both curiosity and fear, just like the sexual in-
stinct according to Freud, and like the combative
instinct according to Bovet, would thus appear to
be liable to undergo a religious sublimation. It
would be interesting to trace the history of their
avatars.
It would be no less interesting to trace the avatars
of the maternal instinct. When thwarted or re-
pressed, this instinct may induce specific dreams (as
in the subject Martha) ; or it may find derivatives in
art or in charitable activities, especially where these
concern children (as in the subject Jeanne).
We catch glimpses, also, of the wealth of knowl-
edge that might be secured by studying the instinct
of imitation. This instinct is thwarted in certain
introverts. They develop an individualistic atti-
tude, but they are fond of choosing distinguished
models upon whom their imitative instinct is con-
centrated (Schopenhauer, in the case of the subject
Otto). Apparently the imitative instinct may un-
dergo sublimation, and The hnitation of Christ is a
mystical type of this sublimation. The phenomena
of the search for a guide, those of ''affective trans-
ference" on to the analyst, those of responsiveness
to suggestive treatment — phenomena hitherto
^Larguier des Bancels, op. cit., p. 220.
118 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
studied by psychoanalysts as functions of the sexual
instinct — ^might have further light thrown on them
by being studied also as functions of the imitative
instinct.
However, this monographic outlook must not make
us lose sight of the synthesis towards which we must
tend. "Wherever we detect ties between different
instincts, we must take careful note of the fact.
MacCurdy, for example (in conformity with Dumas ^
and most of the trustworthy observers of war neu-
roses during the late war), declares that the war
neurosis, or the neurosis of self-preservation, is not
a special disease. It is, he says, the outcome of the
same predispositions as those which could have in-
duced an ordinary neurosis, a sexual neurosis.
Many patients suffering from war neurosis have dis-
played symptoms of claustrophobia, timidity, fear
of the sexual^ (introvert type; in MacCurdy 's ter-
minology, the seclusive tendency). In like manner
Bovet shows that there are remarkable ties between
the combative instinct and the sexual instinct; and
that in all species the combative instinct is closely
connected with the instruct of courtship. It is cer-
tain, also, that instincts have a strong tendency to
undergo extroversion or introversion in groups.
Repression of the combative instinct goes hand in
hand with repression of the sexual instinct and of
the social instinct. But all these syntheses, and
others yet more general, must only be undertaken
as the crown of our researches.
^ Dumas, Troubles mentaux et nerveux de guerre, 1919.
2 MacCurdy, op. cit., p. 34.
DYNAMICS OF THE AFFECTIVE LIFE 119
This theory of mental evolution, long since fore-
shadowed in philosophy, but to which psychoanalysis
has given body, is not a discouraging view. The
possibility of transforming instinct gives new lights
to educators, who have hitherto been in doubt
whether to ignore instinct or to repress it. Hence
Drever and Bovet offer their respective books In-
stinct in Man and L'instinct combatif as contribu-
tions to the psychology of education. Even the
disciples of a spiritualist philosophy have no more
occasion to take offence at this theory of mental
evolution than at the theory of organic evolution.
Such a dynamic outlook would merely make it neces-
sary for the adherents of a spiritualist philosophy
to state likewise in dynamic terms its fundamental
problem, that of matter and form. Maeder is well
aware of this when he writes: ^*I therefore distin-
guish clearly, side by side with the energetic factor
(which is the essence of Jung's concept of libido),
a factor coordinated therewith, the factor of direc-
tion (orientation). From the static point of view
we rightly distinguish between content and form.
Here we have to distinguish between the stream (the
energy) and the direction."^
Those only who know very little about psycho-
analysis can take offence at its generalisations.
What does it matter if a higher feeling owes its
origin to a crude instinct? Origin is not identity;
it is not even causality in the philosophic sense.
Have we not good reason to congratulate ourselves
on having advanced so far along the road!
^ Maeder, Guerisoa et évolution dans la vie de Fâme, 1918, p. 67.
120 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Everyone knows the poem Boaz endormi:
While Boaz was sleeping, Ruth, a Moabite,
Lay stretched at his feet, her bosom bare.
From this seduction there was to be born a race
which Boaz sees in a dream :
Such was his dream that Boaz saw an oak
Which, issuing from his belly, stretched up into the sky;
A race was climbing it like a long chain :
A king was singing beneath, above a god was dying.^
Here we have the poem of sublimation. The manu-
script shows that Hugo had first written ^ issuing
from his loins''; then, feeling the need for frank-
ness, he had decided (like Freud) in favour of the
cruder word. The tree which is growing thus bears
the poet-king David ; and, higher up, Christ. I find
the idea that all poetry, all glory, all holiness, have
this lowly origin, no more offensive than I find
Darwin's idea of the ** descent of man.''
^ Victor Hugo, Légende des siècles.
CHAPTER FOUE
MIXED METHOD: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION
1. Contrast
Suggestion is in bad repute among psychoanalysts.
Nevertheless, psychoanalysis took its rise out of
theories of suggestion and hypnosis.
Freud was a pupil of Charcot at the Salpêtrière ;
he witnessed also some of Bernheim's work at
Nancy. He translated writings both by Charcot and
by Bernheim into German. His studies concerning
hysteria, which were the starting point of his own
researches, were greatly influenced by Charcot and
by the initial work of Pierre Janet upon psycho-
logical automatism. At the date when he was col-
laborating with Breuer, the hypnotic method was
regarded as the preeminent means for the study of
the subconscious; it was in subjects in the hypnotic
state, and through hypnotic methods of investiga-
tion, that Breuer discovered the central fact that
certain neurotic symptoms have a psychological sig-
nificance. It was from this discovery that psycho-
analysis was to issue. Freud relates the matter as
follows :
^*The morbid symptoms disappeared when, under
hypnosis, the patient recalled, with physical signs
indicative of emotion, how these symptoms had first
121
122 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
been induced. During that summer there had been
a spell of excessively hot weather, and the patient
had suffered greatly from thirst because, without
knowing why, she had suddenly become unable to
drink. She would take a glass of water into her
hand, but as soon as it touched her lips she would
thrust it away again like a patient with hydropho-
bia. During these few seconds there was evidently
a lapse of consciousness. She ate nothing but fruit,
in order to relieve her thirst. This had been going
on for about six weeks when one day, under hyp-
nosis, she complained of her English governess,
whom she did not like. She went on to say, with all
the signs of intense disgust, that she had been in her
governess' room, and that the latter 's pet dog, a
horrid little beast, had drunk out of a glass. From
politeness, she had said nothing at the time. Hav-
ing finished this recital, she showed signs of intense
anger, though she had hitherto been perfectly calm.
Then she asked for some water, drank a large quan-
tity, and awoke from the hypnosis with the glass at
her lips. Her trouble was permanently cured.'' ^
Freud has never made any secret of what he owes
to Charcot, Janet, and Bernheim, or of what he owes
to his collaboration with Breuer. He writes mod-
estly: ^^The credit, if credit there be, for having
introduced psychoanalysis to the world does not be-
long to me."^ Furthermore, as we shall see in a
moment, Freud has never shown as regards sugges-
tion the intolerance which is somewhat fashionable
^ Freud, La psychanalyse, p. 27.
2 Ibid., p. 23.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 123
in this respect among psychoanalysts. In this mat-
ter, as in others, his doctrine is less absolute and
more catholic than it is usually represented as be-
ing.
But the fact that psychoanalysis took its rise out
of suggestion is precisely one of the reasons why
many psychoanalysts have a prejudice against sug-
gestion. They are influenced rather by an ill-defined
feeling than by a clear idea, but they like to look
upon psychoanalysis as the development of sugges-
tion and as its climax. They consider that psycho-
therapeutics has made a new departure, and that
suggestion is obsolete. Let us consider this no-
tion.
. There are more definite reasons to fortify the
prejudice just described. The prejudice is the out-
come of a theory held by the Salpêtrière School, ac-
cording to which suggestion is intimately associated
with hypnosis, and according to which hypnosis itself
is a morbid state.
This view, rejuvenated by the data of psycho-
analysis, has been succinctly formulated by
Ferenczi.^
According to this author, hypnosis is the analogue
of neurosis. It might be called an artificial neu-
rosis, definable in the terms which Freud has pro-
posed for the definition of neurosis. On the other
hand, Ferenczi is at one with the New Nancy School
(see below, p. 129) when he considers that in the
phenomena of suggestion the subject is the main
^Ferenczi, Introjektion und Uebertragung, 1910.
124 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
factor, or in other words that every suggestion im-
plies an autosuggestion. But the existence of auto-
suggestion does not seem to him to invalidate his
thesis. Autosuggestion, a phenomenon initiated
within the subject's own nervous system, can, in
truth, be more legitimately compared with neurosis
than if it were a phenomenon due to the influence
of the operator upon the subject.
**The action of the suggester may well be com-
pared with the cause that initiates a psychoneu-
rosis.''
If, against this theory, we raise the objection that
the majority of persons are susceptible to sugges-
tion or capable of being hypnotised, Ferenczi re-
joins: ^'According tx) the experience of psycho-
analysts, the fact that a very high percentage of
normal persons can be hypnotised is an argument
in favour of the view that most persons are liable to
become affected with a psychoneurosis, rather than
an argument against the theory that hypnosis and
neurosis are essentially identical."
The author is categorical in his assertion of this
identity: '^The hypnotiser cannot really arouse any
other manifestations than those which neurosis
spontaneously induces."
As for suggestibility, this should be regarded as
a manifestation of infantile regression. Hypnotic
influence has as its basis a parental complex, one of
attachment to the father or to the mother. This,
sexually tinged, is subconsciously transferred by the
subject on to the hypnotiser. Hypnotic processes
can be classed in two categories. Hypnosis may be
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 125
induced either by fear or by love, either by severity
or by kindness. We are entitled to characterise the
respective forms by contrasting them as ^^ paternal
hypnosis'' and ** maternal hypnosis.'' Ferenczi
goes on to say: ^^Thus suggestion and hypnosis may
be regarded as nothing more than the intentional
production of conditions in which the tendency to
blind faith and unrestricted obedience becomes ef-
fective. This tendency exists in everyone, as a ves-
tige of the infantile-erotic feelings of love and fear
for the parents, but ordinarily it is repressed by the
censorship. Through suggestion and hypnosis, it
may unconsciously be transferred on to the person-
ality of the hypnotiser or suggester."
Such is Ferenczi 's thesis, and, even if we were to
accept it, it would not be a decisive objection to hyp-
nosis and suggestion. Charcot and many others
looked upon these phenomena as pathological, term-
ing them hysterical; but were not thereby deterred
from turning hypnotism and suggestion to account
therapeutically. Because a substance is poisonous,
we must not therefore infer that it can have no cura-
tive value. Still, if it be poisonous, we should think
twice before using it. Charcot has been widely
blamed as a cultivator of hysteria. Unquestionably,
Ferenczi 's thesis leaves on our minds an impression
by no means favourable to suggestion.
We reach the main objection, and I hasten to
admit that it requires serious consideration. It has
been clearly expounded, in a comment upon one of
his cases, by Odier, who shows that in this instance,
126 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
where psychoanalysis effected a cure, '^hypnosis was
inefficacious and harmful. ' ' ^ The same, or a similar,
objection has been made by other psychoanalysts.
It is founded upon two essential phenomena dis-
closed by psychoanalysis in the study of the dynamics
of neurosis. These phenomena are repression and
derivation.
The repression of experiences and tendencies into
the subconscious has been shown to be one of the
determinants of neurosis. Whether we have to do
with an experience to which the reaction has been
inadequate, or with a tendency which has been sys-
tematically thwarted, the energy thus repressed
seeks derivatives ; as we have seen, an aim for such
derivations is provided by imaginative displace-
ments. The symptoms of neurosis are derivatives
of this kind; like dreams, they are a symbolical trans-
lation of what has been repressed. Psychoanalysis
sets the patient free by revealing the play of repres-
sion and derivation, by bringing into consciousness
that which was subconscious.
Now what does suggestion do! It denies the
symptom. It orders the symptom to become non-
existent. Under the menace of vade retro, the
demon may not improbably disappear. But sug-
gestion, acting in this fashion, has acted just like
repression. It has been an artificial repression, and
if repression was the original determinant of the
neurosis it is easy to see that there may be kinship
between suggestion and neurosis. What has become
^ Odier, A propos d'un cas de contracture hystérique, 1914.
p. 191.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 127
of the repressed symptom? Psychoanalytical ex-
perience leads us to suppose that it does not really
cease to exist, but merely undergoes transformation ;
that the energy which animated it finds a derivative.
Thus the demons leave the body of the demoniac
simply in order to enter the herd of swine. The
symptom, indeed, does not leave the subject's body,
but merely undergoes a change of place and form;
driven out of one habitat, it reappears in another;
it has doubtless become unrecognisable, but psycho-
analysis is competent to penetrate the disguise. Ac-
cording to this view, suggestion can deal only with
symptoms ; it can merely cut off the shoots without
touching the root of the evil, and the morbid sap
will find its way into other shoots. Psychoanalysis
alone can effect a radical cure.
2, Conciliation
Are these two methods irreconcilable? Pfister, a
psychoanalyst whose views are broad and tolerant,
does not think so, and he aptly reminds us that
Freud does not think so: *^ Freud has never main-
tained that psychoanalysis can, unaided, invariably
effect a cure. He has never opposed a combina-
tion of his o^Ti method with other methods, pro-
vided that nothing is done to interfere with the
course of the analysis. In slight cases, he has even
favoured a purely suggestive treatment. But pre-
mature suggestion paves the way for disillusionment
and makes our educational task more difficult. ..."
Passing on to the more specifically educational point
128 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
of view, Pfister writes: ^^ Speaking generally, we
shall not resort to a far-reaching analysis unless the
further development of the individual is seriously
hampered. Freud himself shares this view. If
suggestion, or a good education in accordance with,
sound pedagogical principles, suffices to relieve the
symptoms, let us follow the simpler course." ^
These are wise words. Wise, too, are the words
of Pierre Janet. Speaking of the decadence of hyp-
notism and suggestion that followed upon their first
vogue, Janet refuses to see anything beyond a tem-
porary eclipse. He does not regard very seriously
these fluctuations of which the history of science
offers so many instances.^
The criticisms of the psychoanalysts are, more-
over, well-grounded in many cases, as far as con-
cerns suggestion as it was understood by the early
schools, and as it is still understood by most per-
sons. But when we turn to consider suggestion as
it is understood by the New Nancy School (1910-
1920), a school of which few psychoanalysts know
anything, the problem assumes a new aspect. This
is not the place for a recapitulation of what I have
written elsewhere concerning the present position of
the theory of suggestion.^ I merely wish to exam-
ine the objections enumerated above in the light of
the theory that has been elaborated at Nancy.
^ Pfister, La psychanalyse au service des éducateurs, 1921, pp.
164, 184 ; German original, 1917, pp. 94, 105 ; English translation,
pp. 140, 156.
2 Janet, Les médications psychologiques, 1919, vol. i., p. 187.
^ Baudouin, Suggestion et autosuggestion, 1920.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 129
From Bernheim and Liébault to Coue,' from the
first Nancy School to the second, the theory and the
practice of suggestion exhibit a remarkable evolu-
tion. Those who believe suggestion to be obsolete,
those who contrast new methods with it, fail to take
this evolution into account. The present theory of
auto&%i^g gestion has issued from the theories of sug-
gestion and hypnotism held in the year 1880, just as
psychoanalysis has issued from those theories; but
whereas psychoanalysis is mainly derived from the
ideas of the Salpêtrière School, autosuggestion is in
the line of descent from the first Nancy School.
We have here two parallel and independent evolu-
tions, and they would gain by becoming better ac-
quainted. There are some very interesting points
about this historical parallelism. At the same date,
1885-6, Freud was working under Charcot and Coue
was watching the experiments of Liébault. It
would, of course, be absurd to institute a close com-
parison between men so different as Coue and
Freud. Coue is what Liébault was, a simple country
doctor; he is a man of action and an apostle; his
sole aim is to restore health and happiness to thou-
sands, and he leaves it to others to discover the
philosophy that guides his brilliantly successful
practice. Freud, on the other liand, little concerned
about social issues, is the constructor of a whole
system of ideas. Nevertheless the two movements
can be compared, and have been compared. They
have this in common, that they have given an unpre-
^ Coue, La maîtrise de soi-même par l'autosuggestion consciente,
1921.
130 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
cedented extension to the laws of the subconscious,
regarded as laws of the normal working of the
mind; and that upon these laws they have founded
curative and educative practical methods which are
far more ambitious than were those of the earlier
psychotherapeutists. Strange as the comparison
may seem, because of these ambitions both the
schools have been compared (by some in derision,
and by some in homage) to mystical schools like that
of Christian Science. There are close similarities
between some of the conclusions to which the re-
spective theories have led. For example, the psy-
choanalytical theory that mental slips and quasi-
mechanical movements betray the wishes of the sub-
conscious, harmonises with the theory of those who
hold that suggestion (autosuggestion) exercises,
through the instrumentality of our subconscious
movements, some degree of control over the hap-
penings of our lives. The practitioners of autosug-
gestion, like the psychoanalysts, have almost com-
pletely abandoned the use of hypnosis, not because
they consider it dangerous, but because, in most in-
stances, a simpler method is available. In both
cases a parallel progress has been the cause of the
abandonment of hypnotism. Thanks to a growing
knowledge of the laws of the subconscious and of
the imagination, it has become possible to set agoing
in the waking state mechanisms which previously
could only be set agoing with the aid of hypnosis;
this being achieved in the waking state, either by
the exhumation of lost or misunderstood memories,
or else by inducing a mutinous nervous system to
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 131
make its submission to the intelligence. Finally,
both methods are essentially educative, even though
both are chiefly employed for curative purposes. If
the master exercises a certain authority, he does so
only for a brief season, and his persistent aim is
to set the pupil free. Autosuggestion can even be
applied in the absence of any director, and simply
as the outcome of reading a manual, for in the case
of autosuggestion it is preeminently true that there
is no absolute need for the affective dependence of
the subject upon an operator.
Autosuggestion was in the air in 1910, for we have
seen that Ferenczi, working from the psychoanalyti-
cal side, was led to regard every suggestion as an
autosuggestion. Nevertheless he continued to look
upon autosuggestion as a symptom of neurosis. Is
there any justification for this view"?
One thing which Ferenczi says is perfectly true.
The fact that suggestion is operative in a very large
percentage of subjects, perhaps in all or nearly all
(as Coue asserts, and as I agree), does not, per se,
prove that suggestion is normal, or that it has no
kinship with neurosis. A phenomenon which occurs
in everyone is not necessarily *^ normal,'' in the sense
of ** healthy," if its universal occurrence be induced.
Eveiyone can be influenced by suggestion? Every-
one can influence himself by suggestion? No
doubt, but we can poison everyone, and everyone can
poison himself. Here is a simple and obvious ob-
jection, but it is one to which suggesters have rarely
paid adequate attention.
If we are entitled to consider suggestion, theoreti-
132 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
cally identifiable with autosuggestion, as a normal
phenomenon, this is not merely because it is of con-
stant occurrence, but because it occurs spontane-
ously. When we produce this phenomenon to order,
we do not really produce it, we reproduce it. The
theory of suggestion which I have expounded in
Suggestion and Autosuggestion, is based on the dis-
tinction between spontaneous suggestion and re-
flective suggestion. Educative or therapeutic sug-
gestion merely brings into play the psychological
laws which are normally and continually in opera-
tion; it serves merely to guide their working
towards a definite end. Is not this simply a part of
the progressive conquest achieved by mankind over
tendencies and impulses, which have been coordi-
nated into deliberate actions ?
The fact remains that in the practice of suggestion
there is requisite a peculiar state of the attention,
known as contention or concentration, and that this
state has some kinship with hypnosis. But conten-
tion or concentration can arise spontaneously in us
all, whenever our attention is immobilised, or lulled
by monotonous sensations. It cannot be regarded as
pathological; and the fact that we employ it delib-
erately at a given moment, does not make it patho-
logical. If the question of morbidity may perhaps
arise in connection with states of profound hypnosis
(which are beside the question here, since they have
nothing to do with the practical methods we are now
considering), it certainly does not arise as far as
concerns the states of concentration which are the
necessary and sufficient precondition of suggestion.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 133
Furthermore, suggestion as practised at Nancy
has never shown itself to be a culture medium for
neuroses. That is the important point. Perhaps
suggestion may bring into play certain mechanisms
which are also at work in neurosis. If this be true,
there must be the same sort of relationship between
suggestion and neurosis as between art and neurosis,
and we might say of suggestion, substituting one
term for the other, what we said of art: *^A sugges-
tion is a successful neurosis; a neurosis is an un-
successful suggestion.'' But in this case, likewise,
we must bear in mind that there is a great difference
between success and failure. In a word, if we had
to accept such a theory, we could say in psycho-
analytic terminology that suggestion is a form of
sublimation.
Suggestion, we shall be told, might be regarded as
a form of sublimation, were it not that it is a repres-
sion followed by a disastrous derivation. Here we
reach the last and most important objection. The
rejoinder is supplied by one of the laws of subcon-
scious activity, a law which is quite as important as
the laws of repression and derivation. I have for-
mulated it as the law of subconscious teleology, and
it is confirmed every day by the practice of autosug-
gestion. The law runs as follows : ''Suggestion acts
hy subconscious teleology; when the end has been
suggested, the subconscious finds means for its real-
isation/'^ Posthypnotic suggestion, in which the
subject (unaware that the act he performs has been
1 Baudouin, op. cit., p. 97; English translation, p. 117.
134 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
suggested to him) finds excellent reasons for what
he is doing, was one of the first manifestations of
this law to be noted. Here we are in touch with the
phenomenon known to psychoanalysts as rationalisa-
tion, but the law of subconscious teleology has much
wider scope. We know that suggestion can effect
the cure of functional and even of organic disease —
for the cure of organic disease, foreseen by earlier
investigators, is categorically asserted by the New
Nancy School. But even where functional diseases
are concerned, such cures presuppose an intricate
physiological working which takes place in the ab-
sence of any detailed suggestions. The end has
been suggested, but the subject may be entirely
ignorant of physiology and may remain quite un-
aware of what is going on within him. This law is
of primary/ importance. A "knowledge of it has led
Coué to substitute to an increasing extent positive
and GENERAL suggestions for negative aw^^ particu-
lar suggestions.
We use positive suggestions; that is to say, we
aim at affirming the desirable state, rather than at
denying the undesirable state. As I have said else-
where: ^^Veni Creator is, in all respects, a far more
potent exorcism than Vade retro Satana, We get
rid of evil by filling its place with good." ^ We use
general suggestions; that is to say, we direct our
thoughts towards the general state of good health,
towards self-confidence, etc., rather than inclining
to dwell much on specific symptoms.
Experience shows that these positive and general
*0p. cit., p. 153; English translation, p. 180.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 135
suggestions are extremely effective. Thanks to the
law of subconscious teleology, it is needless to par-
ticularise by name each one of the devils to be exor-
cised.
"When such suggestions cure nervous troubles, have
we any right to talk of repression? I do not think
so. If we recall the comparison of repression to a
dam, and of derivation to a side branch into which
the pent-up stream now flows, such a suggestion does
not concern itself with the evil derivative, with the
sluggish backwater which is the morbid symptom;
the suggestion does not build a new dam in the mor-
bid channel, which might make the waters flow in a
yet more disastrous direction. The suggestion
works by opening a new derivative, rational and
beneficent; by opening a new channel along which
the stream then flows spontaneously.
If, however, we find it necessary to formulate a
detailed and negative suggestion (I am assuming
that we think only of symptoms of nervous origin,
since we are not for the moment concerned with the
other applications of suggestion), there can be no
doubt that the psychoanalysts' objection is valid,
and that repression is at work. But we must not
therefore unconditionally condemn such a form of
suggestion, for it can always be supplemented by
positive and general suggestions. To return to our
simile, it is as if we were simultaneously damming
up the undesirable backwater and opening a new
and satisfactory channel. While this work is in
progress, certain fluctuations may occur; we may
find that a rebellious symptom undergoes a displace-
136 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
ment whereby the patient's condition is improved.
This is what happened to the neuralgia from which
the subject Bertha was suffering. Under treatment
by suggestion, it was displaced and became less
severe. Subsequently a complete cure was effected,
as soon as psychoanalysis had revealed the real cause
of the malady.
When we recall, as we have just recalled, that
psychoanalysis was at first practised upon subjects
in the hypnotic state, that is developed out of hyp-
notic methods, we cannot fail to recognise that
neither suggestion, nor hypnosis itself, need per-
force lead to repression ; we realise on the contrary,
that suggestion, in hypnotised subjects, can set free,
can relieve ; we realise that, in hypnosis and through
hypnosis, suggestion is competent to exhume what
has been repressed.
Suggestion in the waking state can play the same
part. It was used by Freud after he had given up
the hypnotic method, and before he had adopted the
extant method of association and of the analysis of
dreams. Let us quote Freud.
**The problem was that the patient had to be
taught something which the physician did not know
and which the patient had ceased to be aware of.
How was this to be achieved? I then remembered
having seen a remarkable and instructive experi-
ment performed by Bemheim at Nancy. Bernheim
had shown us that the persons in whom he had in-
duced hypnotic somnambulism, and whom he had
made perform various acts, although they appeared
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 13T
to have forgotten what they had witnessed and what
they had done under hypnotism, had not really for-
gotten; he showed that it was possible to revive
these memories in the waking state. If, after such
patients have been reawakened, we question them
about what has happened, they declare at first that
they know nothing of the matter ; but if we persist,
if we return to the charge, if we assure them that
they can remember, the lost memories return in their
entirety.
**I pursued this plan with my own patients. When
they said that they knew nothing more, I assured
them that they did know, that they had merely to go
on talking; and I even declared that the memory
which surged up at the moment when I placed my
hand on the patient's forehead would be the right
memory. In this way I was able, without employing
hypnotism, to teach my patients all that was requisite
to restore the relationship between the forgotten
pathogenic scenes, and the symptoms that were the
residue of these. In the long run, however, the
process proved tedious and exhausting, so that it
was unsuitable as the basis of a definitive tech-
nique. ' ' ^
It does not follow that this method, or some similar
method, will prove unsuitable as an auxiliary tech-
nique. In many cases, a subject has nothing what-
ever to say regarding some memory or association;
or the subject has merely the vague sense that there
is a reminiscence which cannot be clearly recalled.
In such instances, I have sometimes taken out my
^ Freud, La psychanalyse, pp. 35-6.
138 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
watch and, showing it to the subject before laying it
on the table, I have declared that the missing mem-
ory would become perfectly clear in ûve minutes.
We would then go on talking of other things, the
subject not consciously watching the passage of time ;
but after the lapse of five minutes, neither more nor
less, our conversation would be interrupted by the
explanation: **Ah, now I remember!*'
Above all, suggestion can aid the clarifying process
of the analysis if the operator assures the subject,
once for all, that the latter 's reminiscences will be
revived with increasing facility, and that dreams will
in future be remembered without any difficulty. A
direct suggestion may even be given that the sub-
ject will be less and less inclined to repress what is
now hidden in the subconscious. Furthermore, the
operator can make use of suggestion to minimise the
distress which sometimes attends the work of anal-
ysis— just as, by suggestion, anaesthesia can be in-
duced for the performance of a surgical operation.
But suggestion is not only useful during the con-
duct of the analysis ; it is likewise helpful, and pre-
eminently so, in the guidance of the subject. Inas-
much as suggestion is at times competent, unaided,
to bring about beneficial derivations of the nervous
force that has been hemmed up in the blind alley
of a symptom, a fortiori it is competent to assist
psychoanalysis in this task.
We see, then, that a collaboration, an enduring
collaboration, of the two methods is possible. My
personal experience has confirmed theory in this
matter. I find that a great deal of time and trouble
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 139
is saved by the use of suggestion in conjunction with
psychoanalysis.
When discussing the thesis expounded by Ferenczi,
I purposely left unconsidered the question of the
transfer emce which was supposed to underlie sug-
gestibility. This transference,^ in virtue of which
the subject subconsciously brings into relation with
the operator all kinds of infantile and sexual feel-
ings, is not peculiar to suggestion. Indeed, its oc-
currence first became apparent during the practice
of psychoanalysis, and it has been made a ground
for objecting to that practice. The rejoinder of the
psychoanalysts, and especially of Ferenczi, is to
demonstrate that the transference in question is not
a direct consequence of the psychoanalysis, and that
it occurs in other circumstances, as for instance in
suggestion.
Psychoanalytical interpretation must unquestion-
ably be invoked to throw light upon the intricate
and hitherto obscure phenomena of the affective rela-
tionship which arises, during suggestion and in other
ways, between subject and director. Psychoanalysis
will elucidate this feeling, as it elucidates other
human feelings, by discovering in it, too, **sexuaP'
and * infantile" elements; it will not therefore con-
demn the feeling. No psychoanalyst would, indeed,
dream of condemning it, since psychoanalytical treat-
ment would itself be involved in the condemnation.
*' Transference on to the analyst" in psychoana-
lytical consultations is regarded by psychoanalysts
1 Freud, Zur Dynamik der Uebertragung.
140 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
as a preeminent variety of such transferences. All
the previously repressed *^ affects/' being suddenly
set free by the analysis, are supposed to seek forth-
with an object to which they can secure fixation ; and
the first object they encounter is, we are told, the per-
sonality of the analyst. These * * affects ' ' are regarded
as being more or less definitely sexual in origin.
According to Pierre Janet, there is ^ * a large meas-
ure of truth'' in this thesis of sexual transference.
^^We must recognise," he writes, *'that in a certain
number of cases the patient's words and gestures
are absolutely identical with those of persons in
love. Probably there is an analogy between their
feelings and those inspired by sexual love."^
Nor have I any thought of denying the occur-
rence of * transference." In the present volume, I
record a fairly typical instance (Rynaldo). But in
this matter, as in others, I should prefer to avoid an
apriori formulation of the problem simply as a func-
tion of the sexual instinct. I am inclined rather to
ask to what extent the imitative instinct may be at
work here ; to what extent fear is operative in arous-
ing the sense that there is need for a protector; and
so on. In my opinion, ' ^ transference " is an even more
complicated affair than has been supposed ; and I
am doubtful whether it is as stereotyped as most
psychoanalysts declare. If we invite the subject to
expect its appearance in a certain form, and if we
ourselves expect it to appear in this form, the odds
are that, thanks to the working of suggestion, the
expected will happen. Let the reader recall the law
^ Janet, Les médications psychologiques, vol. iii., p. 403.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 141
of tlie ** three states'' (lethargy, catalepsy, and som-
nambulism) through which all Charcot's hypnotised
subjects passed. The law was true at the Salpêtrière.
It was not true at Nancy, because here the collective
suggestion that determined the appearance of these
three states had not been made. No doubt the three
states of lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism oc-
curred at Nancy; but at Nancy their appearance in
a definite order, as the outcome of an invariable
method of procedure, was no longer an absolute law
of hypnotism. Is it anything to our discredit if we
should find it necessary to make the avowal that at
Geneva our subjects are less inclined to show a pas-
sion for (or against )the analyst than they show at
Vienna or Zurich?
It would seem that *^ transference," which is an
undeniable fact, takes the form, erotic or other, that
is imposed on it by suggestion. The most important
suggestion, in this connection, is the analysts 's con-
viction of the form the transference will take, for
involuntarily he suggests this form to the subject.
Suggestions of such a character are some of the nu-
merous spontaneous suggestions which are inevita-
bly made in the course of the analysis; they ought
to be guided, to be transformed into purposive and
well-defined suggestions. We can ** cultivate" a
morbid transference, just as it has been possibble to
* 'cultivate hysteria. " It is equally possible to avoid
doing anything of the kind. I consider that sug-
gestion will often enable us, by a direct route, to
open to the subject's interest, to his ^'libido,"
healthy and broad outlooks towards mankind and
142 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the world. If we do this successfully, the crisis of
** fixation upon the analyst*' is likely to pass un-
noticed.
'* Transference" is the fundamental condition un-
derlying ^ ^ influence ' ' or ^ ^ moral guidance. ' ' It thus
serves as an additional link between psychoanalysis
and suggestion, both of which are based upon this
* influence '* and this ** guidance. *' Indeed, at one
time suggestion was identified with them, until, by
degrees, people came to recognise in suggestion a
phenomenon peculiar to itself, namely, ideoreflex
power or autosuggestion. This does not involve
the denial that an affective relationship, a '* trans-
ference,'' remains a potent factor of suggestion.
Where affective relationship exists, suggestion finds
the ground well prepared. This amounts to saying
that psychoanalytical practice is an excellent field for
suggestion, and that suggestions will inevitably be
made in the course of psychoanalysis ; it amounts to
saying that however much the analyst may wish to
ignore suggestion, he cannot help himself in this
matter, and that he would act much more wisely
were he to recognise that he is making suggestions,
and to attempt to guide them. By adopting trans-
ference, by admitting with good reason that a rela-
tionship of deep sympathy arises between subject
and analyst, psychoanalysts have adopted sugges-
tion willy-nilly. Those who proceed to renounce
suggestion are like the child who wanted to go to
the Midnight Mass if only it could be celebrated in
the daytime!
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 143
The trouble is that people used to consider the
hypnotiseras or suggester^s influence as a more or
less occult power attaching to his personality,
whereas according to the psychoanalysts the secret
of the influence resides in the affective disposition
of the subject. The old theory is still a popular
conviction, but the psychoanalytical view certainly
takes us nearer to the heart of the matter. We
must, however, bear in mind that the affective dis-
position of the subject and the personal influence of
the director are merely the obverse and the reverse
of the same phenomenon, and that personal influ-
ence is a reality. It, too, must be taken into consid-
eration before we can lay the foundations of a com-
plete psychology of ** transference." In so far as
the psychoanalyst exercises such an influence, it is
the outcome of a mingling of numerous qualities,
which we cannot always expect to find assembled
in the same individual: such qualities as the quasi-
artistic talent for intuitively divining the subcon-
scious, a severely critical sense, firmness and deci-
sion, confidence and self-command, sympathy, moral
value — all the qualities which characterise a great
spiritual director.^
1 Confession has been termed an "anticipation of psychoanal-
ysis." A Roman Catholic writer (Cochet, Psychoanalyse et mys-
ticisme, p. 562), though strongly critical of psychoanalysis, writes:
"Without transference, no cure. As soon as transference has
occurred, the doctor's task of moral regeneration resembles that
with which Catholic confessors are familiar. It is of great value
in a Protestant land, where so many young men suffer from hid-
den troubles and unavowed torments."
PART TWO
CASE HISTOEIES
CHAPTER FIVE
CHILDEEN
The psychoanalysis of children, especially of yonng
children, cannot in most cases be systematically
made, for, in them, questioning to discover associa-
tions is often difficult. It is better to take the asso-
ciations as they come, and for this the observer
must either live with the child or must get his in-
formation from those who do so.
It was by means of such chance observations that
I was enabled to analyse the dreams of the two
little girls, Linette and Mireille. Though of differ-
ent ages, they showed the same conflict: a very
strong attachment to the mother (partly due to the
father's absence), and a marked difficulty in detach-
ing a share of interest from the mother in order to
apply it to life in general. Life always seemed some-
thing forbidden and dangerous. The foreshadow-
ings of sexuality were accompanied by intense dis-
tress, manifesting itself in nightmares.
In the next two cases, those of Kobert and Jean,
I give analyses of school essays. These can be
analysed just like a dream or a poem, especially
when the writer is imaginative. Above all, the
method is valuable when the teacher has left some
freedom in the choice of subject, for then the imagi-
nation has free play, or, to put the matter more
147
148 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
accurately, it is then entirely controlled by the child's
subconscious. Pfister has shown how psychoanal-
ysis can be turned to account at school but the tech-
nique of such analyses still remains to be deter-
mined. I think that school essays furnish abundant
material, and here we have an additional reason
for preferring those in which the choice of topic has
been left to the child's imagination free from out-
ward constraint. The analysis will sometimes ap-
prise teachers of humiliating but valuable truths
concerning the child's intimate reactions to its edu-
cation. Robert is not sparing in the disclosure of
such truths. As for Jean, he reveals a protest
against paternal authority.
In default of psychoanalysis, it is difficult for
adults to realise how intense and even tragical are
the conflicts that may disturb the child mind, even
at the early age of four. These conflicts are the
germs of those which may subsequently develop into
neuroses, or may give rise to all kinds of crises.
If we make ourselves acquainted with them, we may
hope to guard against such evil consequences.
Of course when we are dealing with children, and
above all when we are dealing with young children,
there can be no question of explaining the conflict
to the subject, as we should explain it to an adult.
Still less can there be any question of making the
child's upper consciousness fully aware of the inad-
missible desires which are manifest in the subcon-
scious. But the educator, when he has discovered
anything of the kind, must note the fact, and must
take measures accordingly.
CHILDREN 149
1. Linette
Dreams of Forbidden Pleasures. Fixation upon
THE Mother.
(from 3 years and 9 months to 7 years.)
First we have a series of dreams and incidents
occurring when the child was just four. They show
clearly the working of some of the elementary mech-
anisms of the dream and of aif ectivity. One of the
advantages of studying children is that these mech-
anisms are displayed in all their simplicity.
Linette has a passion for her black kitten, and
nurses it all day like a doll. She used to suffer
much from nightmares. Thanks to treatment by
suggestion, these have become less frequent. But
they still occur from time to time, and Linette re-
veals them by talking in her sleep. Here is her
commonest nightmare.
I. Kitty is running up Mont Saleve ; it will be lost ;
it is drowning. — This last form of the nightmare, that
of the drowning, is the one which causes the greatest
distress.
The family goes on a journey, and the kitten is
left behind. Linette is continually asking for it,
and, notwithstanding the pleasure of new scenes, she
would like to go home to be with her kitty once more.
But, while she is away, a girl makes her a present
of a tiny doll, smaller than her little finger — a nigger
150 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
boy with sparkling eyes, seated like a child in a
bath. Linette is so overwhelmed with delight that
she is hardly able to stammer a word of thanks.
Though she has brought a large doll with her, she
now thinks of nothing but the little nigger. She no
longer talks of her kitten. One night she wakes up
crying out:
II. *'My little nigger is drowned!''
Here we have her usual nightmare, with the sub-
stitution of the nigger boy for the kitten. The doll
represented a small, black creature with sparkling
eyes, one made to be cuddled. There was enough
resemblance to facilitate a close association between
the nigger doll and the kitten. Transference was
complete. Even more manifest was the transfer-
ence when, having returned home, Linette rushed
off to find the kitten, and suddenly lost all interest
in the little nigger. He had been her inseparable
companion for a week, but now he was left lying
for days in the bottom of the basket in which she
had brought him home. He had merely been an un-
derstudy, a substitute. Nevertheless she had a fond
memory of him and wanted to write a letter of thanks
to the donor.
We are entitled to say that there had been a tem-
porary displacement of affective stress from the
kitten to the nigger doll. There is no need to in-
voke any sort of moral repression in order to ex-
plain this displacement. If there was anything
analogous to a repressed feeling, it simply lay in
CHILDREN 151
this, that the natural object of the feeling was ab-
sent. The case was on all fours with that of a
feeling which undergoes derivation when its first
object has been lost. There was no displacement
peculiar to the dream state; displacement had oc-
curred in the waking life, and the dream life had
followed the lead of the waking life.
About ten days after coming home, Linette had
a dream which was not a nightmare. She related
it after waking.
III. A young lady had given her a doll ; but Linette
had dropped the doll and it had broken. She was ever
so sorry. A little farther on she had met the young
lady who had given her the tiny nigger boy.
I asked some simple questions, being careful that
they should not be leading questions.
Baudouin. What was the doll like in your dream ?
Linette. Like my little nigger, only it was big and
it wasn 't black.
B. What colour was it?
L. White.
B. Was it sitting down like your httle nigger?
L. No, it was standing up, quite straight, like my
Jenny.
Here we have a quaint sort of resemblance Î One
is reminded of the schoolboy's answer that ''chevar*
was derived from '^equus'' by changing ^'e" into
**che'' and **quus" into *'val/' Linette goes one
152 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
better. Her dream doll is like the nigger — save only
that the dream doll is white, big, and upright, in-
stead of being black, little, and seated. It should be
noted that '^ Jenny'' is the only one of her many
dolls which is made all in one piece, so that it can
neither cross its legs nor sit down. The little nigger
is seated tailor fashion, which is rather fascinating.
Linette's answers showed that in her dream there
had been a systématisation of contrast. The doll
and the nigger resemble one another hy contrast.
The image of the nigger is systematically negated.
Nevertheless the girl, the donor, who has likewise
been temporarily effaced, reappears at the end of
the dream. All the other details, the leading details,
show themselves by contraries. We note, moreover,
that the dream, thus retouched, is no longer a night-
mare, although Linette had been ^*ever so sorry."
The feeling of distress is still there, but attenuated.
Everything happens as if the feeling had undergone
attenmation hy displacement upon unrecognisable
images. In like manner a hot liquid is cooled by
pouring it from one vessel to another. Thus the
sample instance of this child's dream gives us a
vivid picture of what is probably one of the func-
tions of the displacement. The latter is, as it were,
a means of cooling the soup, which was scalding
hot, and now becomes drinkable. Thanks to the dis-
placement, what would have been a nightmare be-
comes a dream which, though still disagreeable, no
longer induces terror, or screams, or waking with a
start.
The matter may be reconstituted as follows. The
CHILDREN 153
customary niglitmare, that of the kitten, was immi-
nent, for the nigger doll no longer occupied the lead-
ing place in the child's mind. By a first displace-
ment, which availed itself of an antecedent mechan-
ism (dream II), the nigger was substituted for the
kitten; but the nigger was still too recognisable an
image, and a second displacement led to the substi-
tution of the white doll.
At this period suggestions were being made to
Linette every evening during natural sleep, the most
important suggestion being that she would sleep
quietly without any nightmare. Displacement was
the means used by the suggestion to overcome the
nightmare.
Linette told her dream about the doll in the most
natural way possible. Here is another dream which
she told her mother as a great secret, almost in a
whisper, and with obvious embarrassment. Subse-
quently, when I asked her to tell me the dream and
to give me some more details, she hid shamefacedly
behind the door, and would not tell^me a word.
Here is what she told her mother.
IV. She had a pain in her back. She was quite
alone at the clinic and was being treated.
A ^'pansexualisf' would regard the shame and
embarrassment which accompanied the telling of this
dream as obvious indications of a sexual dream.
This would be jumping to conclusions. Linette
shows exactly the same kind of embarrassment
154 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
whenever allusion is made in her presence to one
of her more serious offences or to the subsequent
scoldings. This embarrassment makes her do what
children are apt to do in such cases. She promptly
represses the disagreeable reminiscence, and changes
the subject. There is unquestionably shame, but
simply moral shame. Now certain data enable me
to give a similar interpretation to the shame attend-
ant upon the recital of Linette^s dream.
Two or three days before the dream, her mother
had had a pain in the back. Finding Linette rather
troublesome, the mother had said: *^You are tiring
me. If you are not a good girl I shall have to go
to the hospital for my back; I shall have to send
you away to a lodging and you'll be all alone."
Linette was afraid that this would happen, and in
the dream her fear found expression. There is a
condensation of Linette left alone and her sick
mother; Linette 's *' lodging" and her mother's ^^ hos-
pital" are condensed into something betwixt and
between, which is called the *^ clinic." Through this
condensation, in which she invests herself with her
mother's illness, Linette perhaps gives expression
to the feeling that in doing her mother harm she is
punishing herself. Certainly the condensation is
enough to make her upper consciousness unaware of
the real issues; but nevertheless she has a confused
feeling that there is something she ought to be
ashamed of.
During the journey on which she had been given
the nigger doll, Linette had had a great disappoint-
CHILDREN 155
ment. It was at Montreux. She had been watching
the preparations for the national festival, which was
to be held on the shore of the lake. She had been
greatly impressed by the sight of the men who
climbed ladders to hang np garlands and coloured
glass globes. Eagerly she was looking forward to
the festival, the fireworks, and the music. But
heavy rain at the critical moment frustrated her
hopes. A few months later she was with her mother
on the shore of the lake, this time at Geneva. She
had been playing with a stranger, a little boy. The
children's mothers had found it necessary to inter-
vene more than once to keep the peace. A game,
begun in high good humour, had ended in a quarrel,
and Linette was out of temper when she came home.
The two disappointments were condensed in the
following dream (4 years and 4 months).
V. We were on the shore of the lake, where I met
the little boy the other day. There were some white
things like fireworks in the sky. Some men were going
up ladders. I didn't like it, Mother, because you
wouldn't take me to hear the music.
We can recognise the attempt to satisfy in a
dream a wish that has not been satisfied in real life ;
this is why in the dream, she sees things **like fire-
works.'' But the wish is incompletely fulfilled;
maternal authority stands in the way of the enjoy-
ment of some of the coveted pleasures (the music),
and the feeling of disappointment persists.
Here is another dream, built upon the same plan,
156 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
embodying an attempt to realise a forbidden wisb,
and entailing a disappointment.
VI. Linette breaks her English doll while she is
washing it.
Her mother has, in fact, often forbidden her to
wash her English doll. In a dream she disobeys;
she satisfies her wish; but the hidden thought that
things will turn out ill persists, and the doll is
broken.
We have thus been able to interpret every one
of these dreams by bringing it into relationship with
certain wishes, fears, feelings, definite happenings.
In each specific mstance we have been careful to
avoid having recourse to more recondite explana-
tions, to avoid invoking explanations which were not
requisite to explain the specific instance under re-
view. Here we have a methodological principle
which we should always follow.
This, however, does not mean that, when we have
a series of dreams, it would be wrong to enquire
whether they do not manifest one or more general
trends, over and above temporary feelings.
Linette 's dreams are less independent than might
appear at first sight. Attention has already been
drawn to the resemblance between V and VI. Here
Linette is in search of pleasures forbidden by her
mother, and the search is unsuccessful. Affairs
turn out ill. But more than this ; in the last dream
(VI), the doll which Linette hreaJcs while she is
CHILDREN 157
washing it recapitulates a motif we have encountered
earlier in the series : the broken doll — the doll which
was only a substitute for the nigger (III) ; the
drowned nigger (II); and the drowned kitten (I).
This suggests the idea that in the earlier dreams
there was something masked, something more than
the simple fear of losing the kitten she was so fond
of. Would this fear have been sufficient to cause a
nightmare? The juxtaposition of the various
dreams suggests that the cat, the nigger, and the
white doll, may be playing the same rôle as the
English doll in dream VI ; now the English doll rep-
resents a pleasure forbidden hy the mother. There
are several data to confirm the notion that the kitten
was linked with analogous ideas. First of all
Linette was continually messing the kitten about,
and her mother had had to tell her sometimes to let
the poor little beast alone. Next, Linette said one
day:
VII (4 years and 11 months). *'I wish I was a
kitten!"
''Why?"
''Because kittens are allowed to eat between meals.
But I should like still more to be a mother cat, because
they make kittens."
*^ Kittens are allowed to eat between meals."
Here the longing finds expression. The kitten rep-
resents the pleasures children are forbidden to en-
joy; for Linette, one of these pleasures is that of
being a mother in her turn, when she will be able
to make up for having had to submit to maternal
158 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
authority. (We should note that when she is caress-
ing her dolls, or fondling her kitten, which is a
living doll, Linette is obviously playing at being a
mother.) But in the dreams that have been re-
corded, the search for forbidden pleasures has in-
variably culminated in a check or a disaster. We
must realise that this search involves something
more than childish disobedience. The forbidden
pleasures include life itself; the life of grown-ups
with all its mysteries ; the life forbidden to children,
the mysteries of which they may not talk and which
arouse a vague sense of fear. The significance of
the allusion to the mother cat which *^ makes kittens''
is unmistakable.
We shall get a stage farther on if we consider the
circumstances in which the dream of the kitten had
occurred for the first time. Linette 's mother was
separated from the father. The girl had known
little of her father, and that little had not been
agreeable. When Linette was 3 years and 9 months
old her mother had moved house; they quitted a
room where Linette and her, mother had lived alone
together in close intimacy since leaving the father.
For Linette, this house-moving was a departure
into the unknown, a step towards the mysterious and
forbidden reality of life. It was just at this time
that Linette was given the kitten. A further new
element in her life was that she now had a bedroom
of her own. The kitten naturally became associated
in her mind with the new house and the new life.
CHILDREN 159
To Linette this new life was sometliing on a larger
scale than the old life had been, for her mother was
no longer the only figure on her horizon.
Now, however, came the usual conflict between the
progressive tendency, leading out towards life,
towards the unkno^Ti and the forbidden, and the
regressive tendency fixed upon the mother. The ab-
sence of the father, and the very close intimacy with
the mother (since mother and child had rarely been
separated for even as long as a few hours), had con-
tributed to make Linette 's fixation upon the mother
very strong.
On waking after the first night in the new dwell-
ing, Linette had some dreams to tell.
VIII. She had been dreammg **all night." The
moon was shining brightly and they were in the old
house. She was looking at the moon. Mother was
there. Then they both went to bed, and in the morn-
ing they got up.
She had dreamed, too, that she had lost all her
things during the move.
She had also dreamed that her kitten had run away.
The dreams give definite expression to the regres-
sive tendency. Linette goes back to the * * old house ' '
so that mother can be there and the two can sleep
together all night. The kitten, which symbolises
the progressive tendency, **runs away." The loss
of the kitten is annoying, but the image of the old
house is pleasurable. There is a conflict between
the two tendencies. Linette is quite upset by the
160 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
move; she hardly knows where she is; she ^ Hoses all
her things/'
We are now led to suspect that the same conflict
is betrayed by the dreams previously quoted, all of
which were subsequent to number VIII. If, in these
dreams, the wish for the forbidden pleasure, the
wish to escape from the mother leads to mischief^
this is because it is counterchecked by an opposite
wish, by the wish to remain tied to her mother.
Here, as elsewhere, distress shows itself as the out-
come of a conflict.
It is necessary to point out that dreams and fan-
tasies of immersion have often been interpreted as
expressions of the regressive tendency and of a
flight from life. Some even go so far as to see in
these dreams and fantasies the definite image of a
subconscious wish to return to the mother's womb,
and the collective symbol has been supposed to ex-
plain a number of myths and rites.^ I cannot insist
too often that it is always hazardous to invoke the
s^Tubolism of the '* collective unconscious" as a di-
rect interpretation of an individual dream. Still,
when an individual analysis leads us to an inter-
pretation which squares with that of the collective
symbolism, the fact is interesting. I may note,
then, that in Linette's case the dreams of drown-
ing (the drowning of the kitten, or the drowning
of the little nigger) seem to me to be expressions
of a regressive tendency and of fixation upon the
mother.
^ Especially the rite of baptism or rebirth. Cf. Morel, L'intro-
version mystique, 1918, p. 54.
CHILDREN 161
In certain dreams subsequent to those we have
been analysing, these relationships were confirmed.
IX (5 years and 2 months). Linette dreams that
the cat brings the doll into her bed. The cat carries
the doll in its mouth.
This shows once more the close and firm associa-
tion between the doll and the cat.
The next dream is more interesting. In it Linette
is substituted for the cat, for in all these dreams she
is herself in reality the central figure. Here again,
after the lapse of eighteen months, we find the rela-
tionship which was shown on the night after the
house-moving (VIII), the relationship between the
drowning dream and what I shall call the derelict
dream (she loses all her things, loses her way).
Moreover, in the other dreams the kitten has some-
times been lost and sometimes been drowned.
X (5 years and 3 months). She dreams every night
that she goes for a walk and loses her way. She is in
the streets of the town ; there are a great many people.
But everyone thinks that she is shopping, and no one
takes any notice of her.
She also dreams that she is on the shore of the lake,
at the place where a man has been drowned. Mist is
rising from the lake. * 'What does it feel like when one
is drowning? Does one come to pieces?'*
She also dreams that she herself is drowning.
Now that we are aware of this relationship, we
shall class other ** derelict'' dreams in the same
group.
162 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
XI (5 years and 3 months). She was quite alone in
the town. First of all a bicycle nearly ran over her,
and then she really was run over by a motor car.
Is it not pathetic to find in a little girl the initia-
tion of the tragedy which psychoanalysis has so
often revealed in adults who have experienced sim-
ilar conditions in childhood. In Linette's case, as
in so many others, the loss of the father and the
intense fixation upon the mother are the predomi-
nant causes.
At this date the derelict dream undergoes a modi-
fication. Linette loses her way and then some one
takes care of her. The person who takes care of
her is usually a girl, and this marks the opening
of a period when she had violent and fleeting pas-
sions for girls or young women. Less often, the
person who takes care of her in the dream is a man.
XII (5 years and 3 months). She dreams that her
mother is boarding her out in a market-place. In the
market she cannot find what she wants ; there are only
red and crimson stuffs ; there is no lace. There was a
wooden staircase at the end of the market, and a young
girl in blue made her a cup of chocolate.
The wooden staircase comes from a house where
there lives a young woman for whom she had one
of her brief passions, but whom she had ceased to
care for; the girl in blue is like a lady who paid a
visit a few days earlier, and who had at once made
a conquest of Linette.
CHILDREN 163
XIII (5 years and 4 months). She has been sent
out on to the staircase. On the staircase she meets a
girl, whom she asks to take care of her.
She was drowning; the girl waded into the water
and fished her out.
Once more we have the relationship between the
derelict dream and the drowning dream.
XIV (5 years and 4 months). She was on a road.
She was picking grasses. There was a man there who
was running after the sun. She had lost her way. A
man took care of her, took her to his house, and pol-
ished her sabots before bringing her home.
Through the same dream passes the figure of a
neighbour's child, a little boy in whom Linette has
been much interested for several days. He was badly
behaved, used nasty words, and made rude gestures,
so that her mother had to send him away.
At the date of these three dreams, Linette 's feel-
ings were manifesting an outward impulsion (the
progressive tendency). As usually happens in the
case of a little girl who has a strong fixation upon
the mother, her affections, despite a few vacillations,
are mainly concentrated upon persons of her own
sex who are considerably older than herself. She
does not usually get on very well with children of
her own age ; moreover, she has few child acquaint-
ances.
Before this blossoming when she was five years
old, Linette (notwithstanding such fantasies as VII,
16é STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the one of the mother cat who makes kittens) found
the idea of marriage repugnant as far as she her-
self was concerned. She got quite annoyed if any-
one talked to her about it.
When she was three years and ten months
old, she had the following conversation with her
mother.
XV. Lînette. Will you give me this teapot?
Mother. When you get married.
L. I won't get married.
M. What do you know about getting married?
L. (suddenly overcome with shame buries her head
in her arms and then hides head and arms in her
mother's lap). I won't tell you.
M. Very well. You needn't get married. You're
quite right. Husbands are horrid.
L. Yes, they're as horrid as the teapot.
M. Why is the teapot horrid ?
L. Because it burns.
A few pages back we rejected the hypothesis of
sexual shame when a simple moral shame seemed an
adequate explanation. But in the shame which
Linette showed when she spoke of marriage there
would seem to have been a sexual element. It is
foolish to feel horrified at such a notion. Of course
a child does not really know what marriage means.
Nevertheless in the subconscious there is a phe-
nomenon which at first we are loth to recognise, but
to which psychoanalysis continually brings us back.
A confused form of sexuality (it would be better,
perhaps, if we had some other name for it) is present
CHILDREN 165
in the subconscious long before puberty, and indeed
from the very earliest years. What may we sup-
pose to have been the incidents that awakened in
Linette's case the sexual shame she exhibited at the
age of three years and ten months ? They may have
been impressions of fear and disgust connected with
the memory of her father, with the memory of cer-
tain actions and certain words. Whatever the cause,
the shame existed, and was attended by a categorical
refusal of marriage. This refusal had a strong emo-
tional basis, for the child became quite angry when-
ever the matter was pressed. The way in which she
buried her head in her mother's lap at the moment
when she was giving expression to her sense of
shame, was another manifestation of the mechanism
previously described. On the one hand there was
the dread of the progressive tendency, of the ten-
dency towards the unknown and the forbidden; on
the other hand, and simultaneously, there was the
regressive tendency, the flight towards the mother's
womb.
Psychoanalysis shows that in adults the progres-
sive and extrovertive tendency includes within it
the sexual tendency; that the fear of life and of
extroversion includes within it the fear of sexuality,
or the disgust inspired by sexuality. Now all these
psychological elements exist in embryo in the child;
and the embryonic elements have the same mutual
relationships as the fully developed elements in the
adult.
After the conversation last quoted, Linette had a
nightmare. Awaking with a start, she screamed":
166 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
XVI (3 years and 10 months). *' There's a toad on
my bed!''
A week later, just as she was going to sleep, she
twisted the corner of the sheet into a point and
said :
*'Look at the little pointed animal which is climbing
up after me."
*'What do you call your little animal?"
*^A toad."
In the dreams of adults we know that dreams of
sticky beasts and pointed things must usually be
interpreted as symbols of the sexual organs. The
condensation of the sticky animal and the pointed
object into a single image is still more significant.
All these things belong to the *^ collective uncon-
scious." Such examples as the foregoing (for it
is not an isolated incident) would seem to force upon
us the recognition that, in children, budding sexu-
ality expresses itself by the same images, long before
these images can have been the outcome of any per-
sonal experience. These considerations lead us to
infer that there are genuinely innate associations
and condensations. The theory of the inheritance
of associations held by the associationist evolution-
ists, and by Darwin himself, apropos of the acquire-
ment of instincts, would appear to receive from such
phenomena a confirmation which the psychological
study of instinct per se has failed to furnish.^ For
^ Cf: the discussion of this theory in Claparède's book, L'asso-
ciation des idées, p. 390.
CHILDREN 167
the psyctology of instinct is concerned only with
motor mechanisms, and merely assumes the exist-
ence of associations of images behind these mechan-
isms. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, directly
studies such associations.
We shall not here go more deeply into this matter.
Suffice it to record without comment a number of
Linette's dreams subsequent in date to XVI, and
showing images of the same character.
XVII. a. One morning, a few minutes after wak-
ing, she said: ''There is a worm on my counterpane."
t. "Waking with a start, she said: *'An animal tried
to eat me; it was a flat dog without any legs; it
crawled.''
c. Waking with a start, she cried : ' ' There is a man
in my bed ! ' ' Then she explained : * ' There was a man
in my bed, and I had to give him some cake.''
d. The fairy Carabosse had made her eat slugs and
worms; the fairy was sometimes flat and sometimes
large.
e. It was at home. They heard the wolf come up-
stairs and knock at the door. ''We shut all the doors
tight. But the wolf had with him another animal,
grey like pussy, but long and flat. The wolf's animal
got in, no one knew how. Outside, the wolf growled
and went on talking. The wolf's animal bit my hand,
in the place where I pricked myself with a needle in
that other dream, and a worm came out of the prick.
I cried when the animal bit me." — ^When the wolf
first came, it was small ; but when it was at the door,
it was big. Sometimes it was little and sometimes it
was big.
/. (This dream ended with a scream.) She dreamed
168 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
of two caterpillars, but there was only one caterpillar.
First of all there was a black caterpillar which she
had believed to be dead, but which had crawled over
her stomach. Then it was a blue caterpillar, larger
than the black one. Afterwards it was the black one
again.
These dreams, which took place between the ages
of four and six, were all attended by feelings of more
or less intense distress. They were contemporary
with the vigorous progressive and extrovertive im-
pulsion which was previously mentioned (XII to
XIV). The idea of marriage, which had been so
repugnant, had at length been accepted. When she
was five and a half years old, Linette became en-
gaged to a boy of fifteen. This was a new infatua-
tion. Apropos she said:
Wouldn't it be horrid if my husband were to die
before we are married. I know I should kill myself.
She got the following answer:
Your husband doesn't care much about you.
Linette rejoined:
You don't know how fond we are of one another.
This passion, like the others, was fleeting. It was
succeeded by fresh loves, for members of her own
sex this time, and equally transient. Linette 's af-
fections are strong but inconstant, and doubtless the
.fixation upon the mother is the main cause of the
CHILDREN 169
inconstancy. Her feeling is trying to break away
from the mother, but finds great difficulty in under-
going fixation upon anyone else. She *' loses all her
things'' in this * ^ house-moving. ' ' As had hap-
pened in her acquaintance with the little boy on the
shore of the lake (V), Linette's passions speedily
culminate in disappointment. Although the pro-
gressive tendency has manifested itself more and
more strongly during the last two years, the con-
flict between the two tendencies persists, and this
is the probable explanation of the intermittent reap-
pearance of the distressing dreams.
Linette is still rather unsociable, at any rate as
far as other children are concerned. She always
gets on better with persons considerably older than
herself. This character trait has been accentuated
by the fact that she has been brought up at home,
without much contact with other children.
A few months at a day-school have only involved
her in quarrels and irritation. Her relations with
other children have for the most part been unhappy.
When she was nearly seven, Linette learned her
first piece of poetry. This is what she chose from
among a number of poems :
THE YOUNG MOUSE
A mouse, young and pretty,
Leaves its hole quietly.
It had left its mother.
Its curiosity was sparkling
In its eyes greedy for new sights :
170 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
"0/t, Jiow I long to have
'^Traversed these hills and valleys!
* * I shall walk in these alleys.
* ' Had I listened to my parents,
'*I should have spent the rest of my days
'*In their sequestered nest.
*'But at last I have made my way out,
**To roam at will like the winds.
**I can go wherever I please.
** Wasn't it stupid of me
'*To pass all my time like that?
**But I'm more than fifteen days old now,
*'And they want to keep me caged up
*'As if I were still a mouseling.
''7/7 jump about at all,
** At once comes a rotigh voice
** Crying loudly, * You're going too fast!'
*'And then this, and then that:
** 'Stay beside me, don't go there.'
*'My mother hasn't much pluck.
*' That's quite natural at her age,
**But at mine it's very different."
Just as our little mouse finished this monologue,
It was suddenly pounced upon
By a tom-oat which crunched it up
Without saying with. your leave or by your leave.
You, child, reading this story,
Think the matter over again and again :
There 's a moral in it !
It is obvious why this tale charmed Linette, for
it is a record of the drama which had been played
so vividly in her own mental development since the
age of four. We have the ill-starred attempt to
CHILDREN 171
break away from the mother and to follow the call
from without, an attempt swiftly succeeded by
retribution. Even the image of the cat, which since
the house-moving had symbolised for Linette the
progressive tendency and its dangers, appeared in
the fable as it had appeared in her own childish
dreams. When Linette recited these verses, her
eyes sparkled with emotion. Without fully realis-
ing it, she recognised herself as heroine of the tale.
This was doubtless her first artistic impression ; for
what is a work of art if it be not a ready-made sym-
bol, one which thrills us as soon as it impinges, all
unawares, upon a drama of our subconscious life ?
2, Mireille
Fixation upon the Mother. Refusal of the
Feminine Role.
(7 years and 6 months.)
Mireille, like Linette, was brought up in close com-
panionship with her mother, her father being away.
Fixation upon the mother is conspicuous. As often
happens in such cases, Mireille likes to play the
masculine rôle; she has a trapeze in the flat, and
uses it a great deal. She hates dolls. She likes to
wear knickerbockers, and makes a fuss if she has
to put on a frock.
In Mireille, as in Linette, we can note the conflict
between the progressive tendency and the regressive.
Mireille shrinks from the idea of growing up. She
172 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
is in the class of the *' middle'' pupils. One even-
ing her mother had a talk with her as to whether,
after the holidays, she was to go into the class of the
**big'' pupils. Mireille said that she wanted to stay
always among the middle pupils because of the hig
boys. She is always rather afraid of big boys.
After this talk she had a dream.
I. All the middle pupils are out for a walk with the
mistress. They reach a square. Suddenly a trap-
door opens in the ground, and there is seen a very
steep ladder which they have to go down. Most of the
children, including Mireille, are afraid to go down.
Only Armand and Madeleine begin to go down the
rungs.
Armand is rather a saucy lad, and Madeleine is
near the head of the class. Commenting on this
dream, the mother says that Mireille often expresses
a wish that she could stay young all her life, so that
she could always be with her mother.
The relationship between the fear of going for-
ward, and fixation upon the mother, is evident. It
may surprise the reader that in the dream the bold
deed should be symbolised by a descent into the
earth. Let us, however, recall Linette's dreams, in
which boldness ends in drowning or some other mis-
hap. The boldness is here inseparable from the
danger. The dream is the outcome of the conflict
between the progressive tendency and the regressive,
and the two tendencies coalesce into a single image.
The following is what Mireille calls *'a nice
dream";
CHILDREN 173
II. The whole family was out walking on the bank
of the Arve. There were some very funny people
who were half alive and half statues. They did not
move. Mireille slid doT\Ti a balustrade to the edge of
the river, and suddenly she came down with a bump
on to the stones. There she was, down below, with
the rest of the family above ; then it was the other way
about, she was up above, but she was not frightened.
At length she found herself above, alone with her
mother, and they picked flowers together.
The mother's comment on this dream is brief but
interesting. *' Sometimes I go for a walk along the
Arve with Mireille. If the whole family is there,
Mireille is apt to lag a little behind, looking about,
picking flowers, or collecting insects. But if I am
out with her alone, she always stays close to me.
I fancy she prefers these walks when none of the
others are there; I suppose she is a little jeal-
ous.''
Evidently the *^nice" part of the dream is the last
stage, when she is alone with her mother. Before
that there has been (as in the case of Linette), a
mishap as the sequel of a bold action. As to the
significance of the animated statues, some associa-
tions would be useful. Still, having made other
analyses, we can tentatively discern their signifi-
cance. A being which was half a statue and half
alive could very well symbolise the conflict of the
two tendencies, the ** statue" representing an un-
progressive creature, one which does not grow up,
whereas the *^ animated" component represents the
progressive tendency. But whatever we may think
174 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
of the significance of these ** people who are half
alive and half statues,'* the general bearing of the
dream is unmistakable.
Now we come to immersion dreams akin to those
of Linette 's dreams which have the same motif.
III. Mireille is in a field with two little boys. They
are all riding on merry-go-round horses. They have
to jump across a stream. The two boys jump first,
and reach the other side safely; then she tries to fol-
low, but tumbles into the stream. Now the ground
opens, and she slides down a chimney into the kitchen
of a lovely house. There are some awfully nice people
there, and they give her something to eat. Meanwhile
the two little boys have been hunting for her. They
come in and tell her about it. Then they all say good-
bye.
Here we have a reminiscence of a fairy tale which
Mireille had read, and in which the ground opened
in this way beneath a little girl. The girl in the
story had reached an old woman's house, and had
been very well treated there. In the dream, Mireille
had only been frightened to begin with. As soon as
she reached the bottom of the chimney, the kindness
of the people there had put her quite at ease.
IV. A café close to a wood. Mireille goes into the
wood by herself, and suddenly gets bogged. She cries
out in a fright. Her mother comes and says: ''Never
mind, I will wash you.*' Then Henry [her eldest
brother] comes. He gets bogged too, but Mireille is
deeper in the bog than Henry. Still, they are not
frightened.
CHILDREN 175
Nevertheless, she says that this dream was ** rather
nasty."
In conjunction with these immersion dreams, let
us consider a suffocation dream which she had
shortly after the death of one of her schoolmates.
V. Mireille is lying at full length in her bed. She
feels stifled, just as she had felt on the day when she
had run about too much. Her mother is there, and
feels her arms, her feet and her head. Then the
mother says: "She is dead; this time she is really
dead.'' Mireille cannot move.
She says that this dream is ** rather nasty, but not
so bad."
These three dreams (III, IV, and V) are all built
up on the same frame-work — one similar to that
which underlay Linette's dreams.
First stage. A progressive action, characterised
by life, enjoyment, and boldness. *^She jumps with
two boys" (III). — '^She goes alone into the wood"
which is close to a café (IV). (The symbol of the
café will recur.) — **As on the day when she had run
about too much" (V).
Second stage. The bold act encounters a check,
and there is danger of death. **She falls into the
stream while jumping across it" (III); **she gets
bogged" (IV); ^^she feels stifled as she had felt
after running about too much; she is dead" (V).
In IV and V, the mother turns up at the critical
moment. In ILL, we may assume that the kindly
hosts symbolise the mother. The motif of III would
176 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
make most psychoanalysts class it among tlie col-
lective fantasies of ^'return to the mother's womb.''
Here, again (if we assimilate the kindly hosts, to
the mother in the two other dreams), this general-
ised interpretation seems to square with the indi-
vidual case. Let us note the fact once more, with-
out attempting a more ambitious conunentary.
In the following dream we find once again the
' ' café ' ' and the * * wood ' ' of dream IV. There is now
a blossoming, not quite free from discomfort, of
the progressive tendency. Exit mother, enter
Prince Charming.
VI. They were all together ia a café. It was an
ugly place. Huge joints of meat were hanging all
round the walls as in a butcher's shop. Mireille went
out into the garden. All at once a man and a woman
tried to catch her. Her mother had run away without
saying a word. Mireille ran away from them, doubling
like a hare. She was very much surprised that her
mother had left her, hut at the same time she was glad
that she was able to run a little. She was almost out
of breath when an officer came into the garden and
said: **Come along, we'll escape together." He ran
with her into a wood close by. He took her hand ; she
ran beside him ; when there was anything in the way,
he lifted her over.
Although distressed at being abandoned, Mireille
was at the same time glad because she had escaped
from her mother and because she was **able to run
a little. '»
CHILDREN 177
This dream of the officer introduces us to a new
series of dreams, in which no analyst can fail to see
tentative manifestations of infantile sexuality, and
in which, moreover, there reappear some of the
symbols we encountered in Linette's dreams (the
toad, sticky things, the wolf). In Mireille, these
symbols are linked, furthermore, with that of ^' flesh'*
(butcher's meat in IV, and ham in VII). The *^ham
boarding-schooP' of the dream next to be recorded
is obviously akin to the "café butcher's shop" of VI,
and this in its turn is linked with the café of IV.
There are close ties between all these images, and
they elucidate one another.
VII. It was a funny sort of boarding-school where
there was never anything to eat except ham. There
were huge slices of ham at every meal, nothing else;
no fruit, no vegetables, nothing.
We had better explain that Mireille 's imagination
has created this boarding-school as a contrast to a
vegetarian boarding-school she had recently heard of.
VII (continued). The bell rang for dinner. Every-
one came in; there were some young men. We sat
doA\Ti, and on everyone's plate was an enormous slice
of ham with a tiny piece of bread. I said : * * I can 't
eat." Then a gentleman who was quite close to me
said: ''Here's some bread-and-butter for you"; and
he gave me a slice of bread. Then I could eat.
We went out for a walk, all schoolfellows together.
We came to a field where there was a little toad of the
colour of a green ham, greyish pink, which stood up-
right like a man and was digging. It ran after us
178 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
and attacked me. It was not very nice, but I didn't
mind much.
The mother notes that during a recent walk in a
wood (a fresh tie with the café near the wood in
dreams IV and VI) they had seen a huge toad which
had made a strong impression on Mireille. But,
sketching an analysis of this dream, she laid espe-
cial stress upon the *^young men" who joined the
rest at dinner: ** During the time when we had to
live in a boarding-house, it was always the young
men whom Mireille was most afraid of. If one of
them ventured to look at her or to smile at her, she
would burst into tears. Sometimes I had to take
her away from table."
VIII. In class, Mireille was asked to look for a cube
in the cupboard. At last she found some white of egg
in the form of a cube : a whitish mass, transparent, a
little sticky. She took it in her hand. There were
some other children ; the white of egg was hidden and
they found it. Then it was Mireille 's turn to find it
once more. But directly she touched it, the mass
began to flow over her, and the more she tried to get
rid of it the more she was covered by it. Some other
children and some gentlemen came to help her, but the
stuff immediately covered them too, and all at once
Mireille found herself floating in the air with the
others. She had to hold them all up. Suddenly they
broke away to get back to the ground, and Mireille
was left alone with a gentleman upon a roof. It was
nice and nasty at the same time.
The mother, attempting an analysis and supple-
menting her remark concerning dream VII, said:
CHILDREN 179
**If gentlemen come to call on us, she likes to re-
main unnoticed. One of our visitors, regardless of
her feelings, endeavoured to caress her. She showed
extreme repugnance, and I suppose that is why she
has these dreams in which gentlemen figure."
The refusal of proffered caresses was certainly
not due to the pride of a child unwilling to be treated
as a child. First of all this would not explain the
*' extreme repugnance"; and secondly it is not in
conformity with Mireille 's wish to remain a child,
with her dislike of the idea of growing up. Mani-
festly what she refuses is to be treated as a woman.
This conception harmonises with Mireille 's fondness
for the masculine rôle, which is related to the fixa-
tion upon the mother. In one of our adult subjects
we shall find a pathological hypertrophy of the
refusal of femininity linked to a fixation upon the
mother.^
The following dream is linked to dream VI by the
images of ^* chasing" and of **a wood."
IX. Mireille sometimes dreams of a wolf which
chases her in a wood. Sometimes the wolf howls.
Sometimes the wolf jumps on her. She runs away,
turning round and round as she runs.
The mother records an observation of Mireille 's
regarding this dream.
1 The case of Renée.— In Renée's case the refusal of femininity
was accompanied by a refusal of maternity. In this connection
a saying of Mireille's may be recorded : "I don't want to have any
children, it gives you such a tummy ache."
180 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
**As soon as the wolf has jumped on me, I am not
so frightened. It's like going to the dentist. I'm
afraid on the way, but it gets better directly he begins. "
I will conclude this series of dreams tinged with
latent sexuality by relating one of an * ^ explosion. ' '
The 'apiece of soap'* which is the starting point
instantly reminds us of the **cube" in dream VIII.
X. '*A horrid dream!'' She is holding a piece of
soap in her hands. Suddenly the piece of soap be-
comes much bigger and explodes. Then there is a
lamp on the table. It is made of two halls , between
which is the handle to hold it by. Mireille says to
herself: '*It's going to blow up, and I shall take it."
Suddenly the two balls swell up and pinch Mireille 's
hand; it hurts her a good deal. She turns and loolcs
at the bed. Her mother is lying there with a head
that has grown quite small and is all in holes.
In this dream we have a further blossoming of
the progressive tendency, and the mother is corre-
spondingly shrunken. But Mireille says that it is
**a very sad dream." She is inclined to blame her-
self: **The explosion came because I touched the
soap and the lamp too much." Forbidden fruit!
As in Linette's case, we see simultaneous manifes-
tations of the wish for the forbidden fruit and of
the fear of it: *^It's going to blow up, and I shall
take it." The framework is the same as that of
dreams III, IV, and V: a bold action followed by
disaster, a dangerous attempt to break away from
the mother and to push out into life.
CHILDREN 181
3, Robert
A Schoolboy's Feelings about School. Intro-
version. Analysis of a School Essay.
(aged 12 years.)
Robert exhibits certain traits of a nascent intro-
version. A studious lad, he is mistrustful and
rather shy, thriftily inclined and even miserly. He
blushes readily and has fits of timidity, in these
respects resembling his elder brother; but in the
latter, introversion, timidity, embarrassment which
is sometimes ludicrous, and maladaptation to social
life, are much more marked, and arouse definite dis-
quietude. In Robert, the traits are in the initial
stage. The observer feels that he is of the same
type as his brother, and that a push would make him
develop in the same direction.
Writing a French essay of which the subject had
been given out as **The History of a Five-Franc
Piece," Robert relates unawares his own history.
He begins as follows :
After spending a long time in a damp cellar, I was
taken out by a bearded man with a long nose and high
cheekbones. He looked at me in a way which I did
not like ; after a time I understood what was happen-
ing to me. He was a policeman who had discovered
a gang of coiners, who were making five-franc pieces
with only 50 per cent, of silver in them instead of 90
per cent.
The analysis of this opening passage is incom-
plete, but the interpretation of some of the details
182 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
is plain enough. The bearded man with high cheek-
bones is a portrait of Eobert's father. The '*damp
cellar*' must be classed among the fantasies of a
return to the mother's womb. Moreover, in the
analysis of the next passage from the essay, it be-
comes plain that at the end of this episode the
** bearded man'' takes the boy (the piece of money)
in order to send him to school. Thus in the episode
of the coiners we may presume that there is a refer-
ence to a frequent experience in real life, when
paternal severity is contrasted with maternal in-
dulgence. It is interesting to compare Robert's
case with that of another of my subjects (Roger,
reminiscence VI), where a similar complex is ex-
pressed by the image of a **fraudulent bankruptcy.'*
The detail of the * ^ 50 per cent, of silver in the coins
instead of 90 per cent." points to the tie between
Robert's mercenary character, on the one hand, and
his introversion and his protest against his father,
on the other. The basis of his youthful avarice
would seem to be the conjoined wish to rob his father
and to escape from his father. Such sentiments are
quite common. Let us continue the essay :
They took me, then, and immediately carried me off
to the mint with a multitude of other coins. My suf-
ferings here were indescribable. Sometimes I was be-
ing stamped, sometimes I was in the furnace or being
handled by all sorts of machines whose use I did not
understand. If I remember aright it was when I was
in one of these machines that an old man with a stoop
nearly got his fingers burned by touching me. We
had no time to talk to one another.
CHILDREN 183
The old man with a stoop is a faithful portrait
of Kobert's schoolmaster during his last year at
the primary school. This man was well known for
his strictness and his rough ways. It is plain, there-
fore, that the mint where the coin suffers so much
is the school. ^^All sorts of machines whose use I
did not understand '' represent the torments the
pupils had to suffer in this ''mint," where a coin
was not even allowed ''to talk" to the "multitude
of other coins." This is a heartfelt cry! Eobert
was diligent, and to outward seeming he was quite
pleased with his lot at school. In his essay, how-
ever, the real reaction of his inner self finds expres-
sion. He naively passes judgment upon the time-
honoured educational methods, and makes use of
images which educational reformers cannot but find
inspiring and delightful. A definite and amusing
detail is that of the old man's burning his fingers
when torturing the coin. The schoolmaster still had
a way of hitting the pupils' fingers with a ruler, al-
though the practice was discountenanced. It is
likely enough that, as often happens during this sort
of amusement, the master had sometimes hit his
own fingers by mistake. Figuratively, at any rate,
he had burned his fingers, for the parents of some
of the pupils had lodged a complaint, and the school
committee had formally forbidden him to use his
ruler in such a way. But we may pass to a more
genial atmosphere:
At length, after a few days, I was placed with a
dozen of my companions in a comfortable box; still,
184 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
we should have liked to have a little more room for our
elbows.
This * 'comfortable box" is the '*New School/' to
which Eobert was sent on leaving the primary
school. He really likes the place. Instead of the
** multitude,'' his class has now only a dozen mem-
bers. But he has reached the age when boys begin to
feel the need for * * elbow room, ' ' and when they find
any kind of authority somewhat restricting. The
feeling of constraint is normal to adolescence, and
we shall see that another of our youthful subjects
(Raoul) gives expression to it by a similar image.
A little farther on, we come to a sentimental in-
termezzo :
Now, owing to a railway collision, I fell with only
one of my companions into the grass of an orchard;
at once I struck up a friendship with her, for we were
both of us very unhappy. We stayed there several
weeks and we began to get tarnished by the rain.
But what we found quite amusing was when we were
able to watch the lizards basking in the sun ; the frogs
were hopping gaily, and once one of them hopped
on to my companion. One fine spring day, quite early
in the morning, I suddenly saw a man who was armed
with a great steel blade and seemed quite likely to cut
our throats.
The ** orchard" is a reminiscence of a real orchard
where Robert had been during the holidays, and
where he had played with some little girls. It is
noteworthy to find here, apropos of an idyll of child-
hood, the customary images of ** lizards" and
CHILDREN 185
* 'frogs." We have already referred to this topic
in connection with the *^ toads" of Linette (XVI)
and Mireille (VII). We should also note the feeling
of fear (the man with the scythe) which is asso-
ciated with these first steps towards the unknown
in life.
After a while, the coin finds it way into the hands
of a grocer:
The grocer said to his wife: ''Add that to your sav-
ings. "—*' Savings ? What for?"— ''You don't know
yet. Perhaps we'll go for a jolly motor-boat excur-
sion ; then we shall need the money. ' '
Saved up in this way, I was kept for about a fort-
night in a dark and dirty comer; often, during the
night, there were rats prowling all around me.
The motor-boat excursion is the expression of one
of Eobert^s most ardent wishes, to which his par-
ents have not yet seen their way to accede. The
dark and dirty corner where the rats prowl is a
reminiscence of a story he has read in which some
people have been buried alive. It also reminds us
of the damp cellar in the first sentence of the essay.
As a whole, therefore, this fantasy is of the same
type as those which we have come across several
times in Linette and Mireille. A progressive wish
wljich remains unfulfilled is succeeded by a regres-
sion towards burial (akin to immersion). The same
motif undergoes further development and dramati-
sation in the sequel, when wish passes into action
and culminates in disaster :
186 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
The excursion in a splendid motor-boat began.
Towards midday, when the grocer was leaning over the
edge to admire himself in the water, I suddenly fell
head first into the water. By good luck when I found
myself at the bottom I was upon a rock and not upon
muddy slime. I stayed there a long time. There was
a long spell of dry weather, and the water got so low
that I came to the surface. I found myself lying be-
side a bone which must, I think, have been that of
one of the lake-dwellers. Some men were busily search-
ing amid this lacustrine debris, and the only reason
why they did not see me was that I was of almost the
same colour as the yellow sand.
Here we have an admirable example of the fan-
tasy, so common in the introvert, of the immersion
of some valuable object (the Khine gold). No detail
is lacking. We have the image of Narcissus ^ lean-
ing over the edge to admire himself in the water;"
and we even have an ^^ archaic'' element in the form
of a lake-dweller's bone. In Robert this five-franc
piece which has fallen into the water gives expres-
sion once more to the association of avarice with
introversion. The drama secures its completion, its
denouement, when *^a lady" finds the coin and re-
stores it to life.
4. Jean
Peotest against the Father.
Analysis of a School Essay.
(aged 12 years.)
Jean exhibited to a very high degree the common
complex of attachment to the mother and protest
CHILDREN 187
against the father. The fact that his parents did
not get on very well with one another had made
matters worse. Sometimes in his dreams he killed
his father. In waking life he was devoted to his
mother, and his pet name for her was ^*ma par-
fumée."
The pupils were told to write an essay upon a
subject of their own choosing. Jean's was entitled
**An Execution,'' and in it he was able to give cir-
cumlocutory expression to his complex. The scene
was placed in his native city. In the great square
there was a parade of the symbols of paternal
authority :
A herald riding a white charger is traversing the
streets of the town; he sounds his horn, and all eyes
follow the representative of the law.
The herald announces that *^the authorities of the
town have sentenced to death a certain Henry-
Arthur Fourrier [note the hyphenated Christian
names — ^' Jean" likes to write his own name in this
way], for *^ having attempted to assassinate Mon-
seigneur le Duc." This ^^Monseigneur" may be
taken to represent Jean's own father, whom Jean
kills in his dreams.
The mother is not forgotten:
All at once a heartrending voice rose from the crowd,
accompanied by sobs: ''My son, my little Henry whom
I love so dearly, what have you done?" And the
poor woman, driven almost mad, began to scream.
188 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Next comes a detail wliicli has little to do with
the subject's conscious mind, and which the master,
correcting the essay from a literary point of view,
naturally marked with red ink as irrelevant.
Nevertheless the detail is of great importance in the
plan drafted by the subconscious. Essentially, we
have to regard the execution as an act of paternal
severity in consequence of some youthful revolt.
From this outlook, the introduction of the follow-
ing incident is easy to understand :
Henry Fourrier was very well known. Even when
he was quite a little boy and when his father had
made him go without his dinner because he had been
naughty, a neighbour's wife was always ready to give
him something to eat.
Once more we have an image showing the mother's
indulgence as contrasted with the father's strict-
ness. A few lines later, the allusion to dinner is
repeated in a rather original form :
The execution was j&xed for the next day before
dinner in order to give an appetite to the spectators.
The hour of the execution approaches, and Jean,
though he has a good command of language and
rarely uses words amiss, speaks of the man sen-
tenced to death as **the victim." In view of the
nature of the crime, this sympathy seems out of
place, and the master underlines the phrase; but
from the outlook of the subconscious it is quite in
CHILDREN 189
order, for Jean has long since espoused his hero's
cause. At length we reach the fatal moment :
Now everyone was silent, the music too ceased, and
Fourrier made his appearance, surrounded by soldiers.
His face was pale, and he stumbled as he walked. Be-
Jiind Jiim came his mother more dead than alive. The
condemned man slowly mounted the scaffold and stood
erect, waiting. The executioner was there too, his
face hidden by a mmk so that he could not he recog-
nised.
The head falls into the basket. Is this the end?
By no means. An unexpected vengeance is on the
way. A troop of horsemen emerges from one of the
streets bringing a message from the authorities:
** Henry was not the guilty man!" So the authori-
ties had made a mistake ! The crowd is infuriated
at this news.
Tears, sobs, oaths, arose from all over the square.
The people rushed to the house of the judge who had
sentenced Fourrier, but he was not there ; they broke
down the doors of the house and ravaged the whole
place.
An impotent revenge, but revenge none the less;
and what a spirit of revolt underlies it.
CHAPTER SIX
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE
Everyone knows that adolescence is heralded by a
crisis. We are not so definitely informed concern-
ing the elements of this crisis. Above all, in any
particular case, it is difficult to say from objective
examination what form it is taking ; how it is devel-
oping ; how far it has developed ; or what is the best
way of helping the girl or the lad with whom we are
concerned in the actual stage of this crisis. It is
here that analysis can come to our aid.
The first case, that of Eaoul, exhibits the crisis
in its simplest form, and as it presents itself in a
normal youth. It is characterised by the sudden
onset of a feeling of maladaptation to life, by an
embarrassment in face of budding virility. We also
discern the protest against the authority of father
and of schoolmaster which we have already noted
in boys two or three years before puberty.
In the case of Kitty we can watch a young girl's
passion for a woman. According to Freud, a homo-
sexual tendency, or at least a latent homosexual
tendency, appears as a normal phase of adolescent
life. Whatever we may think of this idea of a ^ la-
tent tendency, ' ' there can be no doubt that declared
passions for persons of the same sex are common
at puberty. In young girls, such passions may take
190
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 191
an extremely idealised form. Marguerite Evard,^
and subsequently Casimire Proczek,^ have both
quoted, in this connection, ardent letters from young
girls to other young girls, letters which are well
worth reading. Kitty *s phrases are no less ardent.
From these platonic passions there is a gradual
transition to unmistakable inversion. If the pla-
tonic homosexual passions of puberty are not so en-
tirely harmless as is usually supposed, it is likewise
true that the declared homosexuality of puberty is
not necessarily a grave matter. Analysis shows us
that most of these cases are connected with infantile
happenings and with infantile psychological states.
Auguste Lemaître has recently studied the inver-
sion of adolescents from the psychoanalytical point
of view.^ While struck with the frequency of this
precocious inversion, he has secured evidence to
show that it is usually the outcome of psychological
causes which are amenable to reeducative analy-
sis.
Gerard, the third of our subjects, is a steady young
fellow whose trouble is a conflict mainly of the
moral order. He vacillates between different ideals.
He is in revolt against paternal authority, and yet
cannot bring himself to reject it. At the same time
he is harassed by sexual temptations. Here we
have the factors of a multiple conflict common
1 Evard, L'adolescente, 1914, p. 140.
2 Proczek, Ce que les parents devraient savoir sur leurs filles,
1918, p. 110. — A Young Girl's Diary contains much valuable in-
formation concerning this phase of development (cf. Bibliography,
Anonymous).
^ Lemaître, Le symbolisme dans les rêves des adolescents, 1921.
192 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
among adolescents, and one likely to induce a high
degree of nervous fatigue.
Analysis can help us to guide the adolescent
through such conflicts. We need not necessarily im-
part all our discoveries to the youth or the maiden
concerned. What was said of children in this re-
spect, applies to some extent in the case of adoles-
cents— and sometimes even in the case of adults.
We may trouble our subjects unnecessarily by
bluntly making them aware of certain tendencies.
No one is entitled to declare apriori that all repres-
sion is unwholesome. In especial, we should re-
member that a tendency of which the subject is not
yet fully aware, and one of which the subject in
normal conditions becomes aware only by degrees,
is not a repressed tendency. It is inadvisable to
hurry development in such miatters. Tact is essen-
tial here.
1, Raotd
Budding Vieility. The Feeling of Constkaint.
Eaoul is sixteen years of age. He is thoroughly
normal, well balanced in all his aptitudes, and in
most subjects of study he is at the head of his class.
I shall record only one of his dreams, which is
admirably representative of the normal crisis of
adolescence.
He is in a first-class compartment with his school-
fellow Louis. Then he finds himself on the railway
line running after the train, accompanied by Louis
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 193
and others. Louis says to him: ''What a lark, the
suction of the train will help us to catch it.'' At first
Raoul thinks that he will be able to catch up with the
train, but soon he is outdistanced. The country is
well wooded; there is a house which appears to be an
inn ; here the train is waiting for them, but it has now
become a post-chaise. He gets in, and is disappointed
to find how close the quarters seem after the comfort-
able first-class compartment. The driver of the post-
chaise is Monsieur Weiss [the headmaster of Raoul's
boarding-school]. With Raoul, there are four school-
boys in the post-chaise. Monsieur Weiss says to them :
*'Look at these four rolls." The rolls are wall maps;
they are very much in the way. The inside of the
post-chaise is like that of a motor car in which Raoul
usually drives when the family goes away for a holi-
day; in this motor car they are always crowded up
with luggage.
The associations are obvious. Lonis is a bit of
a dandy, and is fond of showing off. Raoul cannot
catch up with the train. In real life he is apt to be
outclassed at certain physical exercises, especially
running, by schoolfellows who, intellectually speak-
ing, are his inferiors. Always at the head of the
class, he finds it rather trying to be aware that his
schoolmates excel him as gallants and sportsmen.
The train after which he has to run represents the
manliness in which he feels himself somewhat defi-
cient. It should be noted that physically he is not
very strong.
The headmaster's words remind him that he has
really heard Monsieur Weiss say something of the
194 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
sort to some of the younger pupils who were
* * packed ' ' into the school omnibus. It annoys him to
be ^'packed" into the post-chaise, and to be still
treated as if he were one of the youngsters. He adds
that Monsieur Weiss always insists that they should
be very careful of their things. The post-chaise, then,
is the school, with the constraints it imposes. But
it is also the family environment, as we learn from
the condensation of the post-chaise with the motor
car. This is likewise shown by another associated
memory, that of a donkey cart in which the family
had gone for a drive through a countryside resem-
bling the one seen in the dream. During this drive
they had had to get out in one place and to run after
the cart. We see that the headmaster is condensed
with the father. He represents ' authority, an
authority against which Raoul is feeling an inclina-
tion to rebel. '
But the really troublesome things are these rolls
they have to carry about, all four of them; each
schoolfellow has a roll. The boy is growing up, and
is incommoded thereby. What are these rolls?
First of all they are maps of the world. Next they
recall four rolled numbers of the review '^L'Illus-
tration'' which, the night before, Raoul had wanted
to put away in his cupboard, and which had taken
so much room that he could not get his slippers in.
Now '^L'Illustration," like the maps, is an epitome
of this great world, whose novelty makes its appeal
to the adolescent, so that his interest in the new
world tends to replace interest in the ordinary
routine of the innocent life of boyhood. The same
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 195
call of the world was symbolised by the train, which
contained a reminiscence of an occasion when Raoul
had left his native city. Thus the rolls were sym-
bolic of extroversion, of the life of the adult con-
trasted with the life of the boy. In addition, how-
ever, as we learn from numerous analyses, these rolls
must be classed among symbols of the sexual organs,
among the symbols which are almost always asso-
ciated with those of the extroverted life of man-
hood. Thus the rolls would seem to express the
various aspects of the budding virility which mani-
fests itself like a foreign body in the physical and
mental life of the adolescent — a development which
is at first embarrassing.
Subjective embarrassment owing to the appear-
ance of new forces ; objective embarrassment in face
of an authority which still restricts the manifesta-
tion of these forces; a sudden failure to achieve
adaptation to life, which all at once has outdistanced
the lad, so that he is forced to run in the attempt
to keep up with it — such would seem to be the char-
acteristics of the crisis which appears sooner or later
in the life of all adolescents, however normal. This
crisis is invariably distressing, but analysis can
alleviate the distress.
2, Kitty
A Young Ghil's Passion for a Woman.
Kitty is sixteen years old. She has a lively imag-
inative faculty, and feels the need of giving expres-
sion to it through writings in prose or in verse.
196 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Her temperament is intuitive and highly nervous.
She displays nervous symptoms such as are frequent
during adolescence: alternate fits of depression and
exaltation ; attacks of headache. But the dominant
phenomenon in her life is an infatuation for a young
Englishwoman whom she knows only by sight. To
this lady, Kitty indites the most passionate of her
poems ; her only desire is that her love shall be re-
turned. This love makes her very sad, and yet she
loves the sadness and diligently cultivates it.
Kitty was four years old when her father died.
Since then she has lived in intimate association with
her mother, to whom she is greatly attached. She
has already had passionate friendships. One of
these was for a girl cousin ten years older than her-
self, with whom she was in close touch when she was
herself twelve years old. At thirteen, she idolised
the French mistress at school. But none of her
former passions has been so overwhelming as
that with which she is now inspired for the fair
unknown.
This passion has lasted for several months.
Eighteen months before the analysis, Kitty had had
a dream, and she is convinced that it contained an
anticipatory \asion of the object of her affection.
It was during the night following her fifteenth birth-
day. We know how to estimate these dreams retro-
spectively regarded as prophetic, especially when
we have to do with so suggestible and imaginative
a subject as Kitty. However, as soon as she saw
the young Englishwoman, she imagined herself to
recognise, feature by feature, the image of her
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 197
dream, and her passion was the outcome of the
shock of this recognition. Here is the dream.
I. She was in a huge forest. An old woman said to
her: ''Come with me; I have something to show you.*'
Kitty was frightened, but she went with the old
woman, who said to her: **If you look in the glass you
will see someone whom you will meet later and whom
you will love." Kitty, looking in the glass, at first
could see only her own image ; then the place of her
own image was taken by that of a woman in mourning.
[The unknown was in mourning when Kitty met her.]
Having told her dream, Kitty went on talking,
and wondered why she had given the unknown the
fancy name of Regina. *^It's not a name I^m very
fond of ! " She knows that Regina is the same name
as Reine. She has come across this name Reine in
a book entitled Mon oncle et mon curé. It is the
name of a girl in the book **who wants to get mar-
ried, and with whom at the end somebody falls in
love." The name also recalls to her a poem by
Louis Duchosal. She quotes some verses of which
she is particularly fond :
De la laine de mon amour . , .
D'une dame, reine d'un jour.
If we had had any doubt as to the character of
Kitty's passion, these associations would suffice to
convince us that she is really in love.
Let us now consider the associations with the
images in the dream.
198 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
**01d woman" calls up the idea of *^ witch." This
already suffices to make us think of one of the sym-
bols of the ^* collective unconscious," the symbol of
the *^ dread mother." But the words of the old
woman : ' * Come with me ; I have something to show
you, ' ' call up the memory of the same words uttered
by Kitty's mother the day before the dream — Kit-
ty's birthday. What her mother had to show was
a birthday present, two volumes of verse. Louis
DuchosaPs Thule, and Victor Hugo's Les Contem-
plations, She knew both the books, and had ex-
pressed a wish to have them for her own.
Such were the immediate associations. A few
days later Kitty realised that her memory had been
at fault. On her fifteenth birthday she had only
been given Les Contemplations. The present of
Thule had been on her sixteenth birthday. There
had been a condensation of two kindred memories
— a common phenomenon when adults are recalling
memories of childhood — but the instance is rather
remarkable as concerns memories so recent and so
important. We must not fail to note the liberties
Kitty's imagination takes with reality, for we shall
then understand how easily so imaginative a mind
could condense the memory of a dream with the
actual sight of a lady in mourning, and become in-
spired with the conviction that the vision of the
dream and the actual vision were identical.
Let us return to our commentary upon the dream.
Kitty had looked forward with especial eagerness
to her fifteenth birthday. It was a momentous oc-
casion upon which a sort of miracle was to occur,
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 199
for her naïve fancy was that on this day she would
** suddenly grow up.'^ The expectation gave rise to
a suggestion, to which the impressive dream was a
response.
The ** glass'' recalled to Kitty's mind the cousin
to whom she had at one time been so deeply attached.
This cousin, when she was going to sing somewhere,
used to spend a long time in front of the glass, and
Kitty used to say to her, **You'll be late."
The mirror is a common symbol of autoerotism
(the myth of Narcissus). We note, in fact, that in
the dream the mirror in which Kitty is to see some-
one whom she will love, shows her at first her own
image. The words **You'll be late,'' addressed to
someone who is spending too long a time admiring
her own image in the mirror, might be regarded as
the expression of an arrest of development at the
autoerotic infantile stage which Freud regards as
the first stage of the sexual instinct. We must be
careful, however, to avoid stressing such ingenious
but fanciful interpretations, unless they are explic-
itly confirmed by the personal associations of the
subject.
Cautiously, I endeavoured to explain to Kitty that
her infatuation was the outcome of suggestion; to
show her what had been the influence of expecting
a miracle on her fifteenth birthday; to make her
aware of the retrospective touching-up of her dream.
I also tried to show her that the lady in mourning
was akin to her own image, which had been replaced
in the mirror by the other; that this vision was a
part of herself J that consequently she possessed it
200 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
in herself, and that she was mistaken in her search
for it outside herself. Kitty listened to me with
interest, but she was so much obsessed by her pas-
sion that she could not fail to offer resistance.
Apropos of memories of early childhood, and
apropos of a prose poem. La dame voilée, written
by Kitty at the age of thirteen, I can discuss remoter
origins.
Kitty has '* always represented to herself the per-
son to Avhom she is greatly attached as being dressed
in black," One day, when she was eight years old,
one of her cousins was going to a concert. The
cousin was wearing a blue dress. Kitty said to her :
^^Why aren't you dressed in black! You would
look so much prettier. ' ' Now the prototype of this
image in black, of this *^ veiled lady," was Kitty's
mother after the father's death. Here Kitty re-
marks that most of the people she has- *' idolised"
were in mourning. The French mistress to whom
she had been devoted when she was thirteen had
been '4n mourning for her father;" another flame
had been '*in mourning for her husband;" another,
*^in mourning for her father."
Furthermore Kitty remembers that when her
father died (Kitty being then four years old) her
mother had considered her too young to wear mourn-
ing. A year later, Kitty had said: **I do wish
someone would die in the family, so that we could
go into mourning." For her, to wear mourning
signifies to be no longer a child. Now, to be no
longer a child was the miracle to which she was look-
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 201
ing forward on her fifteenth birthday. Primarily,
therefore, the young woman in black, who then ap-
peared to her in a dream, and whom she subse-
quently rediscovered in Eegina, was the image of
herself grown to womanhood. This is why, in the
mirror, the image of the woman in mourning took
the place of her own image ; the woman in mourning
had her hair down her back, just like Kitty. As
for Eegina, she has dark eyes like Kitty's, Kitty
being **the only one in the family to have dark
eyes." In this image of herself Kitty externalises
the unfulfilled wish of childhood ''to be in mourn-
ing." Should we add ''to be in mourning for her
father f Are we on the track of infantile feelings
towards her father? This is not unlikely.
In actual fact, however, Kitty's love vacillates
between this image of a second self, and the image
of her mother. Her idols are sometimes "in mourn-
ing for their father," and sometimes "in mourning
for their husband." But in both cases, and espe-
cially as far as Eegina is concerned, the maternal
traits are more in evidence. The objects of affec-
tion are older than Kitty; the cousin is ten years
older; the schoolmistress is much older; Eegina is
a married woman with a little boy. Kitty is greatly
attached to her mother, and her first love passions
are for grown women who are more or less maternal
in type.
The passion remains unrequited. Kitty writes to
Eegina, sends her poems, but has no answer. As
far as her upper consciousness is concerned, the
202 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
love remains as fervent as ever. Below the thresh-
old, however, dissociation is beginning. A month
later she told me the following dream.
II. Begina was dead. It was in a large room. On
the table was a coffin draped ia black, and there were
four candles, for it was late in. the evening or at night.
In the coffin Regina was Ijdng dressed in white, arms
crossed on the breast, her hair loose. The husband
brought the little boy. Both were crying and Kitty
cried too. The husband said: "You must not bear a
grudge against her because she did not answer your
letter ; she was already ill. ' '
Kitty ingenuously informs me that she has
dreamed this several times ** during the last month."
She adds: ^^I don^t think I dreamed it before your
first visit. ' ' She is afraid that the dream may por-
tend Eegina's death. I explain to her that it is
only within herself that something is going to come
to an end, as the result of our analysis. But there
is nothing mournful about this end. She is happy;
and, spontaneously, *^ mourning'' has been replaced
by *^a white dress." Kitty remarks that in the
dream sh'e had on the night following her fifteenth
birthday (I) the lady in the mirror had worn a
white dress. A month earlier, when Kitty first told
me of this dream, she said that the lady in the glass
wore mourning. I showed her that her imagination
was caught red-handed in one of those retrospective
distortions which it inflicts upon dreams. Here we
have an additional reason why Kitty is no longer
impressed by the pseudo-recognition of an image
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 203
previously seen in a dream. In any case, the sub-
stitution of the white dress for the mourning is a
good sign. Kitty has begun to escape from obses-
sion by the infantile image.
A week later there is a new dream.
III. A lady tells Kitty that Regina will have to
undergo a serious operation.
This *' serious operation'' is the analysis itself.
Consciously, Kitty is hardly changed; as she says,
my explanations have more than once made her
think things over; but she has not really accepted
them. In the subconscious, however, forces are evi-
dently at work.
From this date I no longer saw Kitty, but she
begged me not to lose interest in her, and she wrote
to me from time to time.
Now came a great surprise. Eegina answered
one of Kitty's letters. This was not likely to put
an end to the infatuation. Kitty was delighted.
E-egina sent her photograph, and the sight of this
photograph sufficed to bring about a spontaneous ^
hypnotic state in Kitty. (I had treated her by sug-
gestion.)
^ Of course the hypnosis was "induced" by the photograph.
But it was "spontaneous" in the sense that it was not deliberately
caused by a hypnotiser or intentionally by the subject. Compare
the author's distinction between "spontaneous suggestion" and
"induced suggestion" in Suggestion and Autosuggestion, p. 28,
etc. — Translators' Note.
204 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Sometimes, pretty often but not always, when I
look at the photograph I find I cannot turn away my
eyes from it. What happens is this. Gradually my
mind seems to become clouded, my senses are dulled,
I no longer think of anything; I am unable to make
the slightest movement; then my eyes grow heavy,
then I begin to feel sleep. At such moments I feel
as if I should be able to write a splendid poem, but I
cannot hold a pencil; it drops from my fingers, and
I lack the power to pick it up. I could stay for hours
and hours without moving or speaking. When this
sort of trance passes off, I regret its disappearance
as a condition of restful tranquillity; I should like it
to last for ever.
There is something more remarkable to follow.
When she has to do anything disagreeable or diffi-
cult, she need merely glance at the photograph, and
everything grows easy, even though she does not
pass into a state of profound hypnosis.
Here is a strange instance. A short time ago I had
an English composition to write. My mistress had
told me to choose my own subject. I was bored; I
did not know what to write about; my thoughts were
prancing from one subject to another without settling
on anything. Suddenly my eyes fell on the photo.
Mechanically I took it up, and then, still bored, with
the photograph in front of me, I seized my pencil once
more. But now, as by a miracle, I found a splendid
subject, and I began to write with marvellous ease.
I don^t know much English yet, but on this occasion I
did. And would you believe it, when I handed in the
composition which I wrote while looking at the photo
from time to time, I found it hard to persuade tJie
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 205
English mistress tJiat I had written it without any
help.
Kitty was obviously convinced that Regina was
exercising a mysterious influence over her. What
really happened, doubtless, was a stimulation, in
the hypnotic state, of memory traces that were not
sufficiently active to produce an effect in the normal
state. In the particular instance we are now con-
sidering, they were memory traces of English
words or phrases which had been read or heard, but
not consciously retained. This indicates the ex-
treme suggestibility of the subject, and only upon
the basis of a hyper suggestibility can we understand
the genesis of such an infatuation. From the point
of view of the analysis the interesting fact is that
Eegina has become the suggester. Regina has been
substituted for me. It is, so to speak, a reversal of
transference; my influence declines somewhat, whilst
the obsessive image correspondingly regains power.
It is as if the subconscious were making an effort to
elude me, to attach itself more strongly to the guid-
ing fiction.
However, fresh disillusionments were in store.
Regina was to have spent the winter in Kitty's to^Ti,
but she decided not to go after all. Then she gave
up writing. Kitty's passion grew desperate.
What am I to do? I wanted to attract her in any
way I could, but hitherto I have failed. Apparently
my poems do not interest her, for she never refers to
them (besides, I have given up sending them, for what
206 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
is the use?) I liad counted on them to soften her
heart, and I am quite at my wits' end. I have tried
everything, all shades of feeling ; I have exhausted the
most affectionate, the most loving words; I have put
aU my soul into my letters, and more than my soul.
Nothing, not a word.
Months elapsed, and at length calm was restored.
The explanations I had given Kitty more than a
year earlier, and which she had noted without ac-
cepting, were now rediscovered by herself, and were
retailed by her to me. Her passion had been sub-
limated. She understood now what she had pre-
viously been unwilling to admit, that Eegina was in
herself. She no longer wanted to see Regina.
If I ever meet her, I shall say to her: *'For me you
are a soul, a god ; I do not want to know you person-
ally, for as soon as I know you you will cease to be a
god for me.*'
Simultaneously, the imagery of Kitty's poems,
which had hitherto been invariably concerned with
feminine and maternal characteristics, is directed
towards masculine traits. She has outgrown the
stage of homosexual passion. This stage is normal
in a girPs crisis of adolescence, but in Kitty it had
taken an acute and almost alarming form.
5. Gerard
Vacillating Sublimation. A State of Conflict.
Gerard is eighteen years of age. His ease is a
conspicuous example of phenomena which are com-
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 207
mon in adolescents. He suffers from nervous
fatigue which paralyses his attempts at intellectual
work. The nervous condition is complicated by other
elements which need not be considered here. It is,
however, easy to recognise the preponderant influ-
ence of a state of conflict. The young man's inner
life is intensely active; conflicting forces, powerful
energies, neutralise one another. Precisely because
of the struggle between these contending forces, and
because of the consequent fatigue, his effective out-
put is small.
Gerard has lofty moral ambitions. An idealist,
strongly religious, extremely individualistic, and an-
imated with a keen sense of individual responsibil-
ity, he inclines towards a life that is to be pure and
heroically beneficent. He lives chastely, and over-
comes even powerful temptation. But he hesitates
what path of sublimation to choose, for choice is
complicated by the conflict of trends of which he is
barely conscious.
Gerard told me of a dream he had had when he
was between ten and twelve years old. It is an un-
conscious self -revelation of this inward disturbance.
I. He was a dragon. He wore a helmet; he had a
mane; he was on horseback. Then he discovered a
way of flying. He was walking in the air, much after
the manner in which Jesus walked upon the lake.
The dragon is obviously a symbol, not only of
virility, but also of sexuality. Apropos of the word
dragon he thinks of the mythological dragon, **the
208 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
animal with the tongue of flame. ' ' Likewise, in this
connection, he thinks of medieval images : * ' Levia-
than, a huge horned muzzle, devils which issue danc-
ing.'' In a word, the human beast. ^^ Helmet''
evokes ^^ fireman;" ^* horse" evokes *' pashas with
two or three tails;" and Oriental images which, in
other associations, are manifestly erotic. He
wishes *^to fly" — but Jesus walking on the lake calls
up in his mind **the foundering of him who tried to
do the like." All his distress is summed up in this
phrase. He feels that superhuman forces will be
requisite to enable him to reach his ideal.
It is interesting to note that in Gerard's case one
of the associations of '^ flying" was *' domination."
We are reminded of Adler's ideas concerning com-
pensation and the will-to-power. Physically, Ger-
ard regards himself as a weakling, as incapable of
becoming a ^^ dragon." It is extremely natural
that he should feel a high degree of spiritualisation
to be a possible form of compensation, a means by
which he could achieve mental dominance.
Gerard told me of another vision of childhood,
one which he had had many times when he was quite
young, about six or seven years old. It used to
come to him as soon as he closed his eyes before go-
ing to sleep.
II. In the dark there is a host of devils grimacing.
Some of them have fiery eyes. These devils' bodies
are smooth, green or black. They are beardless and
hairless. Some of them are lame. Some have no legs.
There are also some legs tiptoeing about. — A red leg.
— They all dance by.
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 209
A detailed analysis of these visions of the human
beast would be superfluous. They are among the
plainest of those belonging to the domain of the col-
lective unconscious and to the realm of myth. It
is interesting to compare these smooth, hairless
bodies, these legless trunks, with the analogous hal-
lucinations of Auguste Lemaître's subject Amédée.
This was a lad of fifteen who had hallucinatory
visions of a woman of whom he could see only the
**head and arms and the upper part of the trunk,
and lower down, the crossed legs.'^ She was pat-
ting a dog which was hairless and had no legs.
Here we have a systematic repression of images
that are directly sexual.^ In Gerard, the vision of
the devils completes that of the dragon, apropos of
which latter there have already appeared '* devils
which issue dancing.'' We should carefully note
these images and those with which they are asso-
ciated— the red leg, the dancing devils, the pashas,
and the East. They will help us in later stages of
the interpretation. Dancing, in particular, is re-
pugnant to Gerard; he looks upon it as ^*a sacrifice
upon the altar of the flesh.''
Certain other dreams of Gerard's childhood,
stereotyped and of frequent occurrence, carry us a
stage further.
III. Gerard was falling down a well, without reach-
ing the bottom. — At other times he was on a railway
* For fuller details of Amédée's ease, cf. Baudouin, Suggestion
et autosuggestion, pp. 38-40; English translation, pp. 52-54. Cf.
also Lemaître^s account, "Archives de Psychologie," July, 1916,
210 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
line between two walls. The train was chasing him.
He fell; he got up again. He was running along
the metalled way or along the footpath; his skin
was grazed. He saw in front of him the level crossing
where he would be safe. But he fell, panic-stricken,
and lay stretched out.
Associated with these images are ideas of suffo-
cation, and childish terrors, especially dread of the
dark and of being alone. In connection with the
words ^^lay stretched out," Gerard has a ** breath-
less feeling.'' He recalls other dreams, suffocation
dreams he had when still younger; perhaps they
were dreams unattended by any visual image;
dreams in which he was unable to cry out. A tend-
ency to claustrophobia is manifest. Must we go so
far as to speak of fantasies of a return to the
mother's womb! The subject's associations give no
direct indication of anything of the kind ; but in this
case as in others, claustrophobia seems to be linked
in some way with the maternal complex.
Falling down a well is falling into a forbidden and
dangerous abyss. At this stage Gerard has a rem-
iniscence of a well beside which he used to play with!
other children.
We sat on the parapet ; we were not allowed to lean
over.
With the narrow passage ** between two walls"
there were the following associations, which were
related to the claustrophobia.
«^HE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 211
I have never liked roads between high walls. IVe
always been afraid of being alone.
But this dread is linked with a state of conflict.
He has reminiscences which are promptly organized
into a symbol of the conflict.
The road was running beside the sea, and then it led
irdcmd. The sea was eating away the cliffs. I went
to the edge of the cliff, although it was forbidden.
The path ran very near the edge of the cliff.
**The sea" and *4nland'' represent the two terms
of the conflict. **The sea'' evokes **fear, and at the
same time the lure of solitude and the sea." Here
we have the side which turns towards solitude and
introversion. We have attachment to the mother.^
** Inland" is the side of life which is virile and ex-
troverted. The path turns away from *'the sea"
for a time, and leads inland. Gerard fancies that
from a cliff he watches the road thus leading * in-
land." The sight was *^a distraction." The road
called up reminiscences of bicycling with other boys
when ^^they were going to smoke on the sly."
Now we come to images of budding virility and for-
bidden pleasures. The narrow way leads between
the two lives. The anxiety, the customary symptom
^The author refers parenthetically to the word-play between
la mer (the sea) and la mère (the mother) as being frequent in
imaginative fantasies. The actual word-play is untranslatable,
but a similar condensation of images is, of course, common in
English. Cf. Swinburne's "Mother and lover of men, the sea,"
in The Triumph of Time, — Translators' Note.
212 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANAXYSIS
of a conflict, expresses here the conflict between two
fundamental tendencies, the one which keeps along
**the sea,*' and the one w^hich leads '* inland/'
Free associations to simple words I mention to
the subject help us to continue the analysis.
IV. **Dog." — A dog which laughs and twists its
body.
''Twist one's body." — A young schoolfellow who
suffered a little from St. Vitus 's dance. He laughed
like a hysterical patient. Gerard himself. He, too,
has nervous movements; he has "a less refined form
of degeneration. ' '
"Fire." — Dancing flames. Goblins coming out of
the fire; one of Grimm's tales. His ideas are dancing
with the flames. This makes him lose the thread of
his ideas. Gerard himself once more. His own in-
stability. How easily he is influenced.
We have returned to the dancing devils, and to
dancing in general, dancing flames, St. Vitus 's
dance. What interests us is that Gerard associates
these images, whose significance is known to us,
with certain physical and moral traits characteristic
of his state: first of all with disorderly nervous
movements, and subsequently with a mind that is
unstable and easily influenced. Dancing nerves and
dancing ideas. Thus spontaneously, without sus-
pecting it, he expresses the link between these symp-
toms and the inward conflict.
This instability, of which he is aware, shows itself
above all in moral and religious hesitancy, in vacil-
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 213
lations of choice between different forms of sub-
limation.
V. Here are two dreams of two successive nights.
In one of these Gerard attends service in a Catholic
church; in the other, in a Protestant church. The
Catholic church was in the rue de Tournon, where
there is no such church ; it was in the place where there
actually is a Protestant church, the church of the sec-
ond dream. In the Catholic church Gerard receives
communion, but does so in both kinds. On leaving,
he has a talk with a priest concerning liberal Catholi-
cism. They stroll together towards the Odéon; they
pass beside the Luxembourg.
Gerard has been brought up by his father as a
strict Protestant. He remains a Protestant, but is
charmed by a Catholic symbolism. He finds Protes-
tantism somewhat rationalistic and dry, so that it
fails to satisfy all his needs.
The ^^rue de Tournon" calls up reminiscences of
childhood, pianoforte lessons, gymnastic lessons, a
trapeze exercise which the gymnastic master used
to call ** Round the World in Eighty Days'' (images
of extroversion). Here there are word-plays:
Tournon, tourner, is equivalent to the German
**turnen,'' which means gymnastics. There are
reminiscences of children's dances, dressing up
(travesti), wearing masks. In this connection we
once more have ^ * symbolism, " and once more
** dancing."
Subsequently, the Odéon calls up the disguises
and the *'sybolism" of the theatre; the Luxembourg
214 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
leads to the Latin Quarter, to Verlaine, and, through
other associations, to Gerard's first childish inquisi-
tiveness concerning matters of sex.
In all this we may discern an SBsthetic and sym-
bolist trend, by means of which he is enabled to
* travesty'' and to sublimate the sexual instinct bet-
ter than he can within the confines of a system of
* ' dry rationalism. ' ' Apropos of the * * two kinds, ' ' he
considers that ** Protestantism is more dualist than
Catholicism." The main significance of this is that
Protestantism leaves him more fully aware of his
own duality; does not give him a chance of unify-
ing his religious tendencies with his sexual instinct;
leaves the latter free to pursue an independent ex-
istence and to carry on a surreptitious war. Cath-
olic ^ ^ symbolism, ' ' on the other hand, with its
warmer and more palpable imagery, supplies step-
ping-stones, bridges more effectively the hiatus
between religion and the sexual instinct.
This dream brought to light a hidden conflict
which subsequently developed in the conscious. At
the date of the dream, the inclination toward Cathol-
icism merely took the form of a sympathy. A con-
siderable time afterwards the Catholic trend became
stronger, giving rise to a crisis, to thoughts of con-
version. But doubtless the conflict contained
additional elements, for at other times Gerard dis-
played a socialist trend. He was thus oscillating on
either side of the Protestant ideal, now to the right
and now to the left. There would seem, above all,
to have been a subconscious wish to throw off pater-
nal authority. This conforms both with the Œdipus
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 215
complex, of which there are several signs in Gerard,
and with the intense individualism and the spirit
of revolt which are characteristic of his tempera-
ment. To safeguard sublimation (which has been
modelled by his father's educational influence) and
nevertheless to reject his father's authority — such
would seem to be the troublesome conflict going on
within Gerard's mind.
Taking advantage of this conflict, the lower ele-
ments moved forward to the assault. We see this
in the following dream which Gerard had a few days
later.
VI. One of Gerard's greatest friends, a steady
young fellow, an only child, and therefore somewhat
spoiled though carefully brought up, had gone to
spend the night out with a woman, in Spain. Gerard
was greatly distressed, as though he had been person-
ally responsible. His friend had wanted him to come
too, but he had refused.
** Spending the night out" called up reminiscences
of actual temptations, one evening when Gerard had
made a tour of the cafés with some of his friends.
* ' Spain " is * ^ Gil Bias " and a life of escapades. To
sum up, everything shows that Gerard is calling his
friend into the matter to denote his own double.
The next dream expressly shows that the tempta-
tions are reinforced by the vacillations and checks
of sublimation.
VII. Gerard is to preach in a church, at ten o'clock.
He is in a garden recalling that of Cluny Museum and
216 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Monge Square. He loiters. On taking out his watch
he sees that it is eleven o'clock. He has failed to keep
an appointment which was a great honour to him. He
• tries to put the matter out of his mind, this being his
usual practice when anything disagreeable has hap-
pened. He finds himself back in the garden, having
tea with a party of four or five persons.
Cluny, with its museum, brings us to the aesthetic
and ^* symbolist'' trend, and to the Latin Quarter.
It is in order that he may linger here that Gerard
fails to keep the appointment which is such an honour
to him. Here we have a new indication of the fact
that, when there is a conflict between different forms
of sublimation, there is considerable risk that sub-
limation may completely fail to occur. ^^ Monge
Square'' reminds him of a tram running off the rails
there. He feels that he himself is running off the
rails. Having failed to reach the exalted goal, he
tries to forget his failure, and lapses into pleasure-
seeking. The ^'persons" at the end of the dream
call up pleasure-parties and *' dubious company."
Another dream gives unambigiious expression to
a sexual lapse.
VIII. In a hotel. There is a young couple in the
next room. The party wall breaks down. Gerard
tumbles into the other room.
The associations of ^^ the party wall breaks down" :
reading Courteline; improprieties. The tumbling
into the other room calls up : being caught listening
at doors; doing what one should not.
THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE 217
The last dream I shall record shows exceedingly-
well the state of inhibition resulting from these con-
flicts.
IX. Gerard was chained by one hand, probably the
left. . . . He was entitled to unchain himself or to go
for a walk, but he always had to come back to where
he was chained. The chain had to be heavy. It was a
sort of torture, with a flavour of martyrdom about it.
Perhaps Gerard went to see his parents from time to
time. He had some books, but his hand hurt, and he
found it difficult to hold his books open. He was sit-
ting on some cushions. In an oriental book, he was
looking at the picture of a dancing dervish who was
dressed in a blue silk robe shot with black, and was
wearing red stockings. The close of the dream was
definitely sexual.
Gerard is really *' chained. '^ This word called
up the following reflection.
Life is difficult, we are chained by our surroundings,
and we cannot reach our ideal.
The book which he finds it difficult to keep open
recalls that he sometimes finds it difficult to read
while he is walking; it is the difficulty of mental
work in the state of nervous fatigue from which he
is suffering. Something more is at stake than mere
work; what is at stake is the conquest of spiritual
force. The word ^'books'' evokes ''books I am fond
oV] especially Eomain Holland's Vie de Beethoven
and Kabindranath Tagore's Poems. The first rep-
218 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
resents for him **force;'* the second ^^a frenzy of
pure love.^* Being ^^ entitled to unchain himself^'
calls up the * * right to individualism ; ' ' a right which
is actually a duty. Here we discern the opposi-
tion to his family and to his father's ideal. Going
to ^^see his parents" called up a real desire to see
them again. Then he said:
•
A need for support which is in conflict with individ-
uality. To seek support from others is to chain one-
self up.
The cushions evoke **rest, which is necessary but
treacherous." This **rest" does in fact enable
temptation to get the upper hand. The oriental
book, the dancing dervish, and the red stockings, are
images with which we are familiar (II), and we are
not surprised that the dream in which they appear
should have an erotic close.
Gerard is chained by his conflicts ; he is exhausted
by these internal struggles, and the exhaustion
(^ ^needful but treacherous rest") makes him more
than ever a prey to the assaults of the sexual in-
stinct, and thereby his trouble is aggravated. The
vacillating sublimation is ^*a kingdom divided
against itself," and confusedly he is afraid that the
dominion is about to be overthrown. Previous en-
ergies are squandered within this closed precinct,
where many fine young fellows are held prisoner,
but from which an adequate analysis would set them
free.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ATTITUDE TOWABDS THE PARENTS
One of the most definite and most general achieve-
ments of psychoanalysts is to show that a child's
attitude towards its respective parents (more or less
marked love or hostility) is related to a definite type
of character. I write ^'related'' in order to avoid
being too ready to formulate a causal theory. Even
when the existence of the relationship in question
has been definitely ascertained, and has been re-
peatedly confirmed by fresh analyses, it remains
susceptible of various interpretations.
Let us consider what Freud terms the Œdipus
complex. This is the condition in which a boy is
greatly attached to his mother while more or less
hostile to his father. What frequently happens,
when the disposition in question is strongly marked,
is that the subject exhibits certain character traits
which are almost fixed, such as a tendency to shun
the world, introversion, timidity, a dread of sexu-
ality and of the virile aspects of life. According to
Freud's interpretations, the attachment to the
mother is primitive, being a manifestation of * in-
fantile sexuality." The hostility to the father is the
outcome of jealousy. The fixation of the ''libido"
upon the mother gives rise to the subsequent inhi-
bitions. Adler criticises this view.^ He considers
1 Adler, Ueber den nervosen Charakter, 1919, p. 5 ; The Neurotic
Constitution, 1921, p. 8.
219
220 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the Œdipus complex to be a manifestation of a
child's will-to-power. The boy primarily wishes to
take his father 's place ; hostility to the father is the
primordial element; the fantasies in which the boy
regards himself as ** mother's husband" are merely
an expression of this desire; the sexual element is
no more than a symbol. The two theses are not ir-
reconcilable.
We are entitled to ask, moreover, whether the
psychological type is an outcome of these infantile
dispositions, or whether it antecedes and determines
them. Adler inclines to hold the latter view, for he
considers that the little boy's ** will-to-power" has
merely been accentuated by his feeling of weakness ;
and this feeling of weakness explains the subsequent
manifestations (shunning the world, timidity, etc.).
The fantasies of return to the womb, the cult of the
Virgin Mary, etc., are regarded by Freudians as
vestiges of the fixation of feeling upon the mother.
Adler, on the other hand, regards them as nothing
more than symbols of the longing for security.^
A direct study of the history of the early years
of life in certain subjects, and the fact that analysis
of the infantile causes mitigates the subsequent
manifestations, favour the theory that these infantile
feelings have a genuinely causal efficacy. But this
does not hinder the objects of such feelings from
being subsequently regarded as symbols. In any
case, dubieties of theory must not make us overlook
the solidity of the relations we have been consider-
ing. Perhaps the most convenient way out of the
^ Adler, op. cit., p. 139 ; English translation, p. 148.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 221
difficulty is to say that ** every thing happens as if"
the infantile feelings were the cause of the subse-
quent developments.
The first case is that of a woman, Miriam, who is
strongly attached to her father, and whose whole
life is guided by the worship and the imitation of
her father. The other two subjects, Marcel and
Otto respectively, are men who exhibit the Œdipus
complex. In the former, dread of the father has
been transformed into general timidity. In the lat-
ter, the introversion shows itself physically in a
certain awkwardness, and morally in a refusal of
virility and a tendency towards philosophical abstrac-
tion; the social instincts and the combative instinct
have been repressed; individualism is extremely
marked.
1, Miriam
A Religious and Social Calling Inspired by the
Cult of the Father.
A State of Conflict.
The analysis of this case was incomplete. More-
over, in transcribing it, I shall record only its salient
features. These, however, seem to me typical.
Miriam is a woman nearly fifty years of age.
Married and a mother, but separated from her fam-
ily in consequence of the war, she has become a
hospital nurse, this representing to her a most im-
portant vocation. She is in a state of extreme
nervous tension; she is always bustling about like
222 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
some one who never attains complete self-satisfac-
tion, and has never found a proper balance.
The first dream she told me was not a recent one,
for it dated from the time when she adopted her new
calling. Overnight she had not yet made np her
mind, and as she was thinking matters over she was
mentally questioning her dead father, with the feel-
ing that he would approve her choice. The dream
seemed to come as an answer, so that it helped her
to make up her mind. She communicated it to me
in writing.
I. Before adopting my new calling I dreamed of my
father. I saw him coming towards me in uniform,
but I saw that beneath the clothing there was only a
skeleton. The expression of his face w^as calm and
benign. I rushed up to him, wishing to kiss his chest,
but be said to me: ''No, not there, that has an evil
smell; kiss me on the lips." I kissed him ardently.
He said: ''Don't be afraid. Take the door which is
open. I shall be with you, nothing will happen to you,
you can be quite easy in your mind. I shall always
be with you."
Apropos of this dream, Miriam said that she had
had an extraordinary affection for her father. She
added ;
I have always the feeling that father is beside me.
Her father was an army surgeon. She has this
reminiscence dating from the age of ûyq.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 223
She was watching her father dressing some wounds,
and her wish was to do the same thing when she grew
up.
Here are some other memories of childhood:
She would dress up as a boy, an officer, and would
play at riding on horseback. She liked to play at
being a doctor and to treat corns.
Sometimes, too, she looked forward to becoming a
great actress. Her mother had been a great singer,
but had given up this career when she married.
We can already discern the starting-point of a con-
flict between two wishes: first, that for a womanly
life, a very active one, artistic and elegant; sec-
ondly, that for a manly life, a copy of her father's,
subordinated to a strong sense of duty, directed
towards the relief of others, and under military dis-
cipline. The ** extraordinary'' affection for her
father must have helped to give the second wish the
upper hand. From early childhood, Miriam had
been very fond of uniforms, and especially military
uniforms. In her present occupation she dresses
wounds and wears a uniform. She has thus mod-
elled her life upon the paternal * 'imago," which is
always alive and active within her. (*'! shall al-
ways be with you. ' ' — * ' I have always the feeling that
father is beside me.")
In a second dream, comparatively recent, the pre-
ponderant rôle of the father is again manifest.
224 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
II. I was passing the chapel of my old school.
Christ, nailed to the cross, was lying on the ground
athwart the threshold. My father was close to the re-
cumbent figure. He said : ' ' You see that it is a corpse.
We must raise it. You are a nurse ; give me a hand.
Perhaps an operation will still help." I drew near,
and my father and I together lifted Christ's body from
the cross. Then I awoke.
This action of lifting a dead body called up in
Miriam the memory of an incident in the hospital
when a soldier had to be lifted in the same way.
Even without this definite association, it would have
been obvious that the dream contained an allusion
to her work at the hospital. In this dream, like-
wise, her father presides over the work. But there
is an element which was not expressed in the first
dream, namely, the identification of the sufferers
with Christ, the subject's fundamentally religious
outlook upon her vocation. This tie between an in-
tense and active religious sentiment and the idea
of the father can often be noted in women who are
strongly attached to the father.
In Miriam this attachment exhibits the charac-
teristic features of the Electra complex. In her
fantasies (dream I, for example), her fondness finds
expression in the images of a sensual love, in which
the lower elements are of course repressed. (*'Not
there, that has an evil smell.") Moreover, when
the mother's image passes away, Miriam's fantasies
express an extremely intimate union with the father.
Here is a striking instance. While the analysis
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 225
was in progress, Miriam heard that her mother's
death was imminent, and was greatly distressed by
the news. After having told me this, she added :
Last night I look off my nightgown and wore my
father's dressing gown. I kept it on all night. It
made me feel so much better.
Here we doubtless have an echo of the infantile
feeling of love for the father, a jealous love, and one
in which she wishes to seek shelter.
Now comes a dream which she has had frequently.
This introduces us to a different order of ideas.
III. I often dream of a ship at sea. I am on the
ship. The water is often brown, but nevertheless, the
sun is shining brightly.
This same dream, with variations, recurs shortly
afterwards.
ÏV. Miriam saw herself on the shore of a lake which
was dirty and brown. There were a great many
people there. She had to cross the lake with a friend.
I have epitomised the dream; it contained allu-
sions to current affairs. But in so far as it coin-
cided with the habitual dream, its general lines were
those we have been considering.
** Brown" is a colour which Miriam dislikes. The
**lake which is dirty and brown'' calls to her mind
a canal adjoining the house where she lived with
226 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
lier husband. This *^ brown water" is as unpleas-
ant to her as mud or faeces. As for ' ' a great many-
people," in this connection she has the following
associations :
A picnic. — A picnic which Miriam saw on the shore
of a lake when she was about eighteen. — Her loathing
of this picnic. — A lot of drunken people. — The street
through which she had to pass on her way back from
her father's house; the street in which there were
drunken people.
In another dream there is a change of motif.
V. She had to start on a sea voyage. She saw her-
self on the sea-shore. The water was blue but there
was a heavy swell. She said to herself: ''Everyone
will be seasick." There must have been a ship some-
where about, but she could not see it.
There was a wealth of associations to this invis-
ible ship :
The Flying Dutchvvan, which she saw at Frankfort
when she was there with her husband in 1889. — They
had come late and had left before the end. She re-
members one of the scenes with the shadow of a ship.
The mirage of a ship which she saw in the Mediter-
ranean.— Mirages she has seen in the African desert.
The mirages recall reminiscences: a terrace on which
she had tea in the early days of her marriage; her
son's beginning to walk.
I should add that the colour ^' brown" — not re-
pugnant this time, but as if sunlit (** copper-col-
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 227
onred'') — appeared in anotlier dream; this leads us
to the colour of the Eiffel Tower and to the same
year 1889, the year of the Paris Exhibition, the first
year of her marriage, the year of beautiful memories
and of '^amusements." The copper colour in the
dream was the colour of a pair of satin slippers.
The elements of dreams III-V are akin and are
mutually explanatory. We are concerned with
youth, ''life," and love; with extroversion, if you
will. This is the ** voyage" to which the dreams
refer.
The "seasickness" and the *' dirty brown" call
up a repugnant aspect of this life. From various
allusions, and by analogy with many other analyses,
we can easily recognise the cruder aspect of sexual-
ity. "A great many people" seen on the shore of
this dirty water (IV) recalls a "picnic" of which
the subject had a "loathing," one she went to when
she was eighteen years old (the age of certain in-
itiations) ; it also recalls images of "drunken peo-
ple ' ' met when she was leaving ' ' her father 's house. ' '
"Nevertheless, the sun is shining brightly." It
is the sun of 1889, youth, travelling, the theatre, the
first days of married life, and the epoch of her little
boy's beginning to walk. But Miriam has a more
or less conscious feeling that she was unable to en-
joy this life to the full. She expresses this by two
very fine symbols, connected with the memory of
the play she and her husband went to see in Frank-
fort. "They had come late and left before the
228 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
end/' This is the first symbol. The second sym-
bol is that of the * ^mirages" (associated with these
the subject has reminiscences of her youth). Here
we have the '* phantom ship,'' which was that in
which she made her own *^ voyage."
In a word, Miriam has not fully accepted a
woman's life; and we know the conflict which is the
cause of her failure to accept it. Symbolically, she
has never been able to quit **her father's house."
The fascination of the paternal *4mago" has led
her to seek a life of a somewhat masculine charac-
ter, quasi-military, a life under orders, a life of self-
denial.
The following dream, which likewise occurred
during the period of the analysis, shows that the
conflict was still going on at that date :
VI. An eminence overlooking the sea. . . . Two
cliffs between which the tide is ebbing. A casino,
music, a fashionable crowd, palm trees. A snake
writhing. Miriam starts. A gentleman says to her:
*^l!)on't be afraid." But the snake allures her. She
says: *'The snake typifies cunning." The gentleman
answers : ' ' No, it typifies wisdom. ' ' She is fascinated.
She puts the snake into a basket and gives it to the
gentleman. The snake disports itself in a flowery
mead. The gentleman says to her: ''You must never
part from this snake, it is very gentle."
In the sea which is ebbing between two cliffs, and
above all in the episode of the snake, purely sexual
allusions are obvious. It is remarkable to find once
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 229
more, in a woman who has never heard of Freud's
ideas, this typical fantasy, which has been analysed
hundreds of times, and which is as old as the world
— or the Garden of Eden. On this tree are grafted
all the feelings which have just been evoked by the
reminiscences of 1889.
Here are some associations:
An eminerice overlooking tJie sea. A seaside resort
where Miriam stayed with her son when he was five
or six years old.
The ebbing tide. Another seaside resort. This also
is connected with her son's childhood. She was there
with her husband.
Snake. A snake she saw in the Caucasus. She was
with her husband and her son. It was a happy time.
TJie gentleman. This was an intimate friend of her
husband. He was the same age as her husband; he
was devoted to their son.
The flowery mead. Her mother.
**The gentleman" is manifestly a substitute for
the husband, and the first associations evoke definite
memories of the early days of married life. The
last association is explained by the fact that this
elegant and flowery life is linked with the image of
her mother (the singer), just as the life of self-
denial is linked with the image of the father. She
has never made a definitive choice between these
two lives, nor has she been able to harmonise the
two. The latent conflict is doubtless largely respon-
sible for her perennial condition of restless agita-
tion.
230 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
She dreams of someone who seems to be a substi-
tute for the father, and she remarks that she is on
the lookout for this person's daughter. She is
really searching for herself.
Here is another dream.
VII. Someone gives her a scrap of greyish-blue
paper, upon which she can read, as if seen through
tracing paper, the words: ** Where are you? Whither
are you going?" The writing is rather like her
mother 's.
The piece of paper calls up the paper on which
she used to write to her husband; but doubtless the
fact that she sees the writing * ' as if through tracing
paper'' is in line with the *^ mirages" of the remin-
iscences previously recorded. The question ^^ Where
are you!" reminds Miriam that her mother called
out these words to her in the garden one day when
someone was coming to pay a visit; this ^* someone
was coming to pay a visit" promptly evokes the
coming of her husband. We are still in the same
circle of ideas. Nothing could express more aptly
than these two questions the state of a mind which
is unsatisfied, which is questioning itself, which is
searching.
During the analysis, which was accompanied by
autosuggestion, considerable though somewhat
fluctuating progress was made towards securing out-
ward and inward calm. The subject was delighted
with the results. Unfortunately circumstances
made it impossible to pursue the analysis as far as
it ought to have been pursued.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 231
2, Marcel
Dread of the Fathee. Timidity and undue
Scrupulosity.
Marcel, a man of thirty-five, a clerk, is timid and
scrupulous in disposition. His timidity and
scruples are manifest in connection with his profes-
sional work; it is when he is at the office that they
are seen in an acute form.
He is continually wondering whether he has done
his work right; he checks an account twenty times
over; cannot add up figures under the eye of the
head clerk without feeling paralysed with alarm;
and he will return again and again to make sure
he has locked up the office on leaving. An intense
and sudden emotion takes possession of him when
he has to announce anyone to the manager, or to
tell the latter he is wanted on the telephone. In
especial, contact with the manager makes him feel
absolutely incapable.
In our first interview I asked Marcel to relate to
me any reminiscences of childhood which might oc-
cur to him spontaneously. Here were the first
memories to arise.
I (when he was about 8 years old). Marcel had
broken a bolt on the front door. His father noticed
it when he came home to dinner. He seized the child
by the nape of the neck and the legs and threatened
to throw him into the cesspool.
232 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
II. Whenever his father spoke rather loudly, Marcel
was terribly startled. He could not do his school work
when his father was there. — ^Walking one day in the
town with his father, he tried to read the name of the
street they were in, and made a mistake; he read
** Etudes" instead of the real name; his father scolded
him severely.
Marcel went on to say that the fear which, in
childhood, he ha'd felt for his father, was what he
had subsequently felt during his term of military
service, and still later in the case of his superiors
at the office. Thus spontaneously, knowing nothing
of the psychological theories involved, hç grasped
the nature of the affective transference which dom-
inated his whole life. Originally he had been afraid
of his father; later this fear had been transferred
to all the persons who wielded over him an author-
ity analogous to paternal authority.
We should carefully note that he was unable to
do his school work when his father was present.
Moreover, it is extremely significant that the mem-
ory of a scolding from his father should be linked
with the word *' étude.*' We realise now that, in
the transference, office work has been substituted
for school work, just as the head clerk has been sub-
stituted for the father. We glimpse a relationship
between the difficulty of school work in former days
when the father was present, and the difficulty of
office work nowadays when the head clerk is pres-
ent; and between the father's anger on account of
a broken bolt, and the exaggerated anxiety Marcel
feels as to whether he has locked up the office.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 233
I gave the subject a summary explanation of these
facts. I enabled him to realise that in his subcon-
scious, whenever a superior was present, he con-
tinued to believe himself the child whom his father
would scold. Then we had a first sitting of auto-
suggestion.
I saw Marcel a week later. He had noted an im-
provement from the fourth day after our first inter-
view. When he locks a door now, he says to him-
self : **I am locking it, I have locked it," and he
has no need to verify the fact. When adding up
figures in the head clerk's presence he no longer
feels stiff with fear.
He told me his earliest memory of childhood.
III (4 years old). He had taken a basket which
he had been forbidden to touch. He fell and cut his
forehead.
The father does not appear in this reminiscence,
but there is the feeling of disobedience punished,
the state of mind of a child who has been told,
**God has punished you." Then he went on to re-
late a dream of a fall when bicycling, and this dream
revived a forgotten memory of childhood.
IV (about 12 years old). He fell from a bicycle. —
His father did not like to see him riding a bicycle.
In the subject's mind, the last reflection appeared
to be closely linked to the actual memory of the
fall. The father had not been there to punish, but
234 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
he disapproved, and it seemed to the child that the
fall had been an indirect punishment. It was not
the father; it was (if we may use the terminology
of the psychoanalytical school) the ** paternal
imago'' which punished.
We should note also that in this case, as in the
case of the basket (III), the indirect punishment
was a fall; and that in another reminiscence (I) the
father had threatened to throw his son into a cess-
pool. From our experience in other cases we know
that images of falling and of defilement are gen-
erally the outcome of a condensation formed around
a sentiment of moral lapse and of defilement. This
gives us a clue, though we are not yet in a position
to follow it up.
The following associations were called up by the
image of the bicycle.
Three things which go very quickly. — A barrel. —
Children rolling down a bank. — A swing.
These associations do not, per se, teach us much
more than that there is an idea of rapid descent.
We know, however, that sensations of rapid descent,
and also the sensation of being in a swing, are
closely akin to voluptuous (sexual) sensations, and
we may expect to see once more the common rela-
tionship between such sensations and the feeling of
shame. But despite the great probability that this
relationship exists in any particular case, it is wiser
to say nothing positive about the matter until the
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 235
hypothesis has been confirmed by the subject's asso-
ciations/
Marcel went on to tell me the following dream :
V. He dreamed about his dog. There were some
burglars ; he wanted to set the dog on them ; the animal,
which is usually very obedient, refused to budge;
thereupon Marcel gave it a beating.
The associations were as follows :
To set tJie dog at tJiem. To catch, to seize, to bite,
'*I shall have time to get there, I thought I knew the
burglars. ' '
The dog's disobedience. ^'I thought of beating it.''
Burglars. Burglars caught in the act, taking to
flight; people running away and looking over their
shoulders.
To beat. A gnarled stick.
A gnarled stick. ' ' What every man has, ' ' the penis.
The last association, perfectly spontaneous, is
valuable when coming from a man of mediocre at-
tainments who has no knowledge of psychoanalytical
theories, and who has had absolutely no suggestion
of the kind from me. Such an association does not
of course entitle us to assert, as some are inclined to
^I lay stress on the need for caution in this respect. To
doctrinaire psychoanalysts, such caution will doubtless appear
superfluous; but I regard it as an essential methodological rule
in so delicate a sphere, and in one where investigators have not
always been careful to avoid seductive hip^theses and facile gen-
eralisations. ^^ .
236 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
assert, that the image of a stick is a fixed symbol
of the penis; but it certainly shows that there is a
definite relationship between the two images.
Again, Marcel told me the following reminiscence.
Like that of the broken bolt, it dated from the time
when he was about eight years old.
VI. Some neighbours had a Great Dane. Marcel
was on his way back from an errand. When he saw
the dog he was frightened and ran away. The dog
jumped at him and tore his pinafore.
The symbol of tearing is often akin to that of
defilement; this general relationship is in accord
with the particular instance. We see, moreover,
that the dog calls up the real episode of a fright,
which may have had, qua fright, an influence upon
the subject's psyche. But there is more than this in
the matter. The ^'burglars'' in dream V are shown
by the associations to be symbolic of something done
on the sly, something blameworthy which people
are caught doing. The association of '* stick'' con-
firms the notion that we have to do with sexual
shame.
The subject went on to tell me of another dream.
VII. He was being chased by some men. He had a
tight feeling in the throat so that he could not make a
sound. The anxiety was intense. There were two
men. One had come in by the door ; the other was hid-
den under the bed. After talking the matter over,
they decided to kill Marcel. The man who had come
in by the door was tall, and was rather like Marcel;
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 237
this was the one who wanted to kill Marcel ; he had a
coarse, unkempt beard. The other, without speaking,
seemed to say: **What^s the good of killing him?'*
This was a short man with a square head and frizzy-
hair. He reminded Marcel of some one in real life,
' ' 3L good chap, but inclined to run after the girls. ' '
When asked about ^' under the bed," Marcel
thought of the following things.
Waiting. — Hiding, and afraid of being seen. — At
school they had played at ghosts. — His parents had
been superstitious and had talked about ghosts before
him.
These ghost stories, like the attack by the dog
just recorded, had doubtless contributed to the
child's timorousness. Here, likewise, deeper in-
fluences are at work. The impression of *' hiding
and afraid of being seen'' is akin to the symbol of
the * * burglars. ' ' Once more we have a blameworthy
and shameful action. Moreover, the man hidden
under the bed is a symbol of the sexual man. He
is indulgent, let us say morally indulgent; whereas
the other, standing up face to face and resembling
the conscious personality of the subject, is merci-
less. Here are indications of a conflict, as usual in
anxiety states.
The associations to the image of ''a tight feeling
in the throat" are extremely significant. The sub-
ject thinks of a clasping, of hands drawing near.
The ** hands," in their turn, promptly call up large
hands, his own, and, without transition, masturba-
238 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
tion — a spontaneous association wliicli surprises the
subject. This immediately calls up his father's say-
ings and threats relative to the practice of mastur-
bation, so that at length we have a clear indication
of what kind of shameful act is in question. We
are brought in touch with a crisis through which so
many adolescents have to pass, one whose momen-
tousness is commonly aggravated by brutal threats.
At the word ** anxiety,'' new and important asso-
ciations appear. Some of them such as a spasm of
anguish {serrement de cœur), heing clasped (être
serré), confirm the comparison of this anxiety to
the impression of a tight feeling in the throat [être
serré à la gorge) — and ail we have just discerned
behind this impression. Here are some other asso-
ciations :
Feeling of powerlessness. — Feeling (in the dream)
of being unable to call his wife. — ' ' If my mother dies,
what will happen? This thought makes me sick of
life.''
Here is an indication of fondness for the mother,
a fondness which is often connected with hostility
to the father. In Marcel, however, the negative
element of the ^^Œdipus complex" (hostility to the
father) would seem to be more important than the
positive element (love of the mother). When I en-
quired about his parents, he gave me additional sig-
nificant details.
<(
VIII. He once dreamed that he saw his father dead ;
it was all over." (He expressed no regret.)
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 239
At an earlier date, before his marriage, he dreamed
that his mother was dead. He has had this dream
again, since his marriage. The dream aroused *'a
terrible spasm of anguish,*^ iinaccompanied by tears.
Moreover, during the dream, he reproached himself;
he might have been a better man ; he was responsible.
What follows is extremely typical.
He recalled having had as a child a conscious wish
(instantly repressed, of course) that his father might
die.
To-day he sometimes feels the wish to die before his
mother, so that he may not have to witness her death.
This has come especially since he has been married and
separated from her.
When he was a child, he had looked upon his father
as the adversary. Feeling himself incapable of over-
coming this adversary, he had the impression of ^'re-
treating before him."
This retreat is preeminently the attitude of
timidity. As for the hostility to tlie father, we re-
garded this at first as a revolt against brutal
authority. Now, however, it appears, though less
frankly, to be likewise associated with his fondness
for his mother. Obviously, then, jealousy is a con-
stituent factor.
On the other hand the idea of the mother is more
than once associated with the idea of the wife. In
the associations of dream VII, the subject has a
* ^feeling of being unable to call his wife,'' and he
promptly goes on to ask himself what will happen
*Vif my mother dies." Then, speaking of dreams in
which he pictures his mother as dead, he finds it
240 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
necessary to locate tliem as ** before marriage" and
** after marriage." Marriage is the decisive date
at whicli he was separated from his mother, but the
need for the mother remains strong; he is afraid
that his mother will die, and the fear is all the more
intense because he cannot **call his wife"; he is
unable to look to his wife for deliverance from his
anguish. He retains the infantile attitude of look-
ing to his mother for help.
"We know, moreover, that fondness for the mother
(the Œdipus complex) may lead to the repression
of sexuality. But the subject tells me, in addition,
of a positive cause for repression, and for scruples.
He had related an erotic dream.
IX. The woman in the dream resembled his wife,
but was rather red lq the face and was fatter than his
wife.
Questioning him concerning this dream, I learned
that his wife was often ailing. Being himself in-
spired by strict religious and moral principles, and
wishing to lead a very regular conjugal life, he had
imposed upon himself, for this reason, a consider-
able degree of continence. His dream would there-
fore seem unmistakably to have been an imaginary
realisation of a repressed wish ; but the scrupulosity
of his character made him blame himself for it, and
for all similar thoughts. (I reassured him by tell-
ing him that it was perfectly normal, and that no
one could be held accountable for dreams and invol-
untary thoughts.) The repression and the scruples
doubtless played their part in producing the anxiety
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 241
dream (VII) ; another factor was resistance to the
possible temptations of masturbation. Anxiety is,
in fact, often connected with such repressions and
conflicts. The feeling, in the dream, of inability to
call his wife, may correspond to the continence im-
posed upon him by his wife's ailments. But, quite
apart from this contingent positive significance, the
dream is of great value to us for the light it throws
upon the general determinants of the subject's psy-
chic life.
One who sees sex everywhere, a **pansexualist,"
being aware of the importance of shame that is sex-
ual in its origins, and being informed in this case
of the father's threats concerning masturbation,
would attribute everything to these factors, and
would use them to explain all the imagery in the
subject's mind. He would discover sex, and noth-
ing but sex, in the reminiscences of disobedience,
insisting that the bolt (I) and the basket (HI) were
merely symbols of the penis; that the two wheels
of the bicycle (VI) represented the testicles; and so
on. Although it is likely enough that, in virtue of
condensation, the memories of these incidents may
contain sexual allusions, I consider that an exclu-
sively sexual explanation would be erroneous. It
seems to me indubitable, that, on the one hand, the
real incidents which form the kernel of the conscious
memories, and, on the other hand, the subject's gen-
eral dread of paternal authority, must also have
had their importance as determinants; and I do
not think that we are entitled to regard all this as
purely ** symbolic" of something else. It is unduly.
242 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
venturesome to assert thus categorically that one of
the elements of a condensation, one of the least
obvious elements, is the only important one.
The subject's characteristics appear to me plain
enough: fondness for the mother, protest (a timor-
ous protest) against the father; shame of sexual
origin, connected with the father's threats regarding
masturbation. The subject's shamefacedness, his
dread of making mistakes, and his excessive scrupu-
losity, were the outcome of these factors.
A cure was effected after seven sittings, once a
week at first, and subsequently at longer intervals.
Each time, the analysis was followed by autosug-
gestion. It will be remembered that Marcel noted
an improvement as early as the fourth day; during
the second week he was aware of ^^great activity";
in the fourth week a feeling of alarm he had hitherto
always had when going down into the cellar had
disappeared. During the sixth week the idea of
autosuggesting ^'I shall no longer be able to be
timid" spontaneously occurred to him; during the
seventh week he became convinced that his timidity
had been eradicated. During the ninth week he con-
sidered that he was becoming *'a trifle aggressive."
I kept him under observation for three years.
3. Otto
Eepeessed Virility. Awkwardness and Constraint.
A Philosophic Trend.
Otto, a man of forty-three, suffers from a per-
petual feeling of awkwardness and constraint. He
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 243
finds it difficult to express himself. He says that
he lacks ease, spontaneity, and readiness. Unaided,
however, he has been practising autosuggestion with
very good effect. He came to consult me in the
hope that psychoanalysis would contribute to his
progress.
He was the youngest of a large family. His
mother had told him that his coming had not been
altogether welcome. Nevertheless, she had always
been affectionate, and even indulgent. The father
was kindly and well educated ; he could read Latin ;
the farmers of the countryside nick-named him * * the
professor.'' Before learning to write, Otto used
to scribble imaginary notes on the margin of books
because he had seen his father make notes there.
The father was wont to say : * ^ This lad has a future
before him."
When he was about twelve, Otto read an essay
by Schopenhauer upon duelling, in which the phi-
losopher described an insult as a matter of no mo-
ment, and said that to take vengeance by killing the
offender seemed disproportionate. Subsequently
Schopenhauer became Otto's favourite author, and
Otto adopted Schopenhauer's pessimist philosophy.
*^I read too much Schopenhauer," he said. He also
read Helvetius. In poetry, he had a passion for
Catulle Mendès.
An intelligent workman, he was self-taught. His
mind was formed, without any methodical instruc-
tion, by chance reading.
Up to the age of twenty he exhibited a certain
tendency towards fetichism for women's clothing.
244 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Then he went in for the ^ * simple life, ' ' lived whole-
somely, avoiding stimulants and excitement of all
kinds; the fetichist tendency disappeared. For a
long time he was extremely timid; he had no ex-
perience of sexual intercourse until he was twenty-
two.
Otto gave me the foregoing sketch of his history
at our first interview. Then he told me a reminis-
cence of childhood.
I. He had been given a hen canary, **one that did
not sing. ' ' Otto, feeling sorry for the bird, had set it
at liberty. Then he had been told that the canary
would perish in freedom. Every evening, for a whole
week, he suffered from * * remorse after he went to bed. ' '
Questioning upon this reminiscence evoked the
following responses:
Canary. A canary in his lodgiag. He says to him-
self: "Wliy do people keep birds in cages?" He
thinks it a cruel practice. If Schopenhauer influenced
him, it was probably because this philosopher's teach-
ings harmonised with his own natural tender-hearted-
ness.
Hen canary. A reminiscence from the age of
twenty. Some swallows had built their nest in the
billiard room of the restaurant. The hen swallow used
to sit upon her nestlings, while the father bird spent
the night outside the house. Otto's sister, an out-
spoken girl, said: ''He can't sleep with his wife, for
there are too many people about." Coming back to
the question of being tender-hearted, he says that this
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 245
compassionate trend disappeared from the time he was
twenty until he was twenty-five. During this inter-
lude, he had a craze for shooting, but now, once more,
shooting had become distasteful.
One that did not sing. As a child. Otto used to sing.
Now he has lost the power. Speaking of instru-
mental music he says : " In this respect I have retained
my spontaneity." But if people begin to sing when
he is playing the piano, it ''irritates" him. He likes
to hear a woman singing, but not a man. Singing
sounds to him like ' ' bellowing, ' ' unless it is very good.
His eldest brother used to sing.
The cancry will perish. If the bird should die, it
would be all the better off. The pessimist philosophy.
Remorse after going to bed. Insomnia. Anxiety.
Otto used to suffer a good deal from sleeplessness ; this
trouble began when he was two-and-twenty (simul-
taneously with his first experience of sexual relations),
and he did not become free from it until four years
ago. He had wanted to lead an ascetic life, being
influenced in this respect by Schopenhauer. At first
his sexual experiences had only been with professional
prostitutes, for he had been too timid to try his luck
elsewhere. Only two months ago had he dared to do
this for the first time, so that his sexual life now
seemed to him more normal. He considered that the
change had been brought about by autosuggestion.
The broad lines thus became manifest at the first
sitting : repression of virility, closely linked with the
repression of spontaneity, with lack of ^^ease.''
Singing, a man's singing, is a symbol both of the
virility and of the spontaneity; the disappearance
of the faculty for singing which Otto had possessed
246 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
in childhood is connected with the general repres-
sion; it indicates a loss of spontaneity. When ex-
plaining that he remains able to play the piano, he
says: *'In this respect I have retained my spon-
taneity/' His eldest brother, who for him sym-
bolises virility, used to sing; what Otto finds dis-
tasteful in singing is the male voice.
We see that the subject is an ^ introvert.'' He is
attracted by Schopenhauer because he rediscovers
his own nature in that philosopher. The combative
instinct is repressed as well as the sexual instinct.
We observe such tendencies as are common in indi-
viduals of this type : a trend towards sympathy with
all living beings ; one towards pantheist metaphysics ;
one towards the renunciation of life, an aspiration
towards non-entity.
We can likewise catch a glimpse of what seems
to be usual in these cases : attachment to the mother,
a sort of homesickness for the mother, the longing
to be * incubated" (the mother bird sits upon the
nestlings; the father bird is thrust out). It seems
possible that the metaphysical aspiration towards
non-entity may be linked with fantasies of a return
to the womb. The subject is fond of dwelling on
the idea that his mother did not welcome him into
the world.
The hen canary, which does not sing and which
is in a cage, symbolises repressed virility and intro-
version. The setting of it at liberty corresponds
with Otto's first contact with the sexual life and
with ''the world." The remorse he felt after giv-
ing the bird its freedom corresponds with the mental
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 247
distress ensuing upon his first experiences of this
kind.
During the second week of the analysis, Otto had
the following dream:
II. He said to his father: *'The needles are in one
of the drawers of my desk.'^ They were needles for
darning socks. Really, there was nothing in the
drawer except papers and newspaper cuttings which
he intended to send to his brother.
Commentary through associations.
Father. My father was a very good shot.
Needles. An embroidered handkerchief. Needle-
work.
Brother. The brother is bellicose, and favours the
German side. Otto takes the opposite view, and is
pacifist. The drawer is full of newspaper cuttings
bearing upon discussions Otto has had with his brother,
cuttings which Otto was going to send him; but the
war broke out. Otto recalls a dispute which, when a
child, he had had with this brother, the eldest of the
family. Otto had wanted to keep his long locks; his
brother had scolded him, and wanted to take him to
the hair-dresser.
He also remembers a country excursion he had made
with his brother and some other young folk. He was
then twelve or thirteen years old. They had chaffed
him, and he had run away all by himself. He had
tried to find his way home through the wood and had
lost himself.
Darning. Making up a quarrel. The adage which
248 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
says that you must quarrel before you can make it up.
Socks, Ladies' summer stockings. The old fetich-
ist tendency.
What does all this signify f The father and the
elder brother symbolise virility. The combative in-
stinct (a good shot, a bellicose pro-German) repre-
sents virility. Whereas his father is a good shot,
Otto hates shooting. The disputes with the brother
represent a repudiation of virility. This repudia-
tion has led Otto to cultivate certain feminine char-
acteristics : long hair, for instance ; and he quarrels
with his brother because the latter has wished him
to have his hair cut short and thus make him manly.
But what is in question to-day is, a symbolical recon-
ciliation with the ** brother,'' that is to say with
virility; what is in question is, a return to the
* ^father." This will be at one and the same time a
*^ making it up'' and an acceptance of sexuality. As
concerns this matter, Otto explains that he is still
affected by an irrational resistance to sexuality, a
resistance which entails quarrels with his mistress.
He always feels regretful after the sexual act.
The incident of the country excursion likewise
draws our attention to the frequent relationship be-
tween repressed virility and maladaptation to social
life, to camaraderie. This maladaptation tends to
increase the desire for solitude, the longing to with-
draw into oneself.
Otto sent me three dreams he had recorded in
writing.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 249
III. The other evening, when I came home after
visiting my mistress, I felt greatly touched in recalling
how sweet she had been. . . . That same night I
dreamed that, notwithstanding my protests, my father
was absolutely determined to come and live with me.
My father is eighty years old.
VI. I find myself in A. square in front of the M.
restaurant. There were some acrobats with a singing
monkey. At the end of the song, by which I was
greatly surprised, they took off a sort of hood the
monkey had over his head, and lo and behold it was a
man.
V. I found myself in a barber's, and I had myself
shaved by Monsieur Baudouin, who then attended me
to the door, saying: ''Come back again for psycho-
analysis."
Apropos of III, the subject recalls that when he
was coming away from his mistress' house he had
wondered to himself: **will she manage to change
meV* [To make an extrovert of him.] He had
had a cough, and she had made him some lichen tea.
To this there were the following associations :
Medicinal herbs. — There is a family tendency to
throat troubles. — One of his brothers had been in-
valided from the army for goitre.
The father represents virility, extroversion.
Virility now wishes to come into its own, although
the subject still resists. The throat trouble, which
recalls the difficulty of singing (I), represents in-
complete virility. The subject expects his mistress
to exercise a quasi-magical influence over him, to
250 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
give him a '^medicinal herb'' which will take him
out of himself.
The second dream signifies a protest against one
form of virility and extroversion, the crude and
coarse form which can never satisfy a man like Otto,
who is a person of advanced moral and intellectual
development. M. restaurant and A. square are in
the centre of the prostitutes' quarter. Apropos of
the monkey, the subject thinks of his dislike for
singing, which he styles ^^ absurd" in the mouth of
a monkey or of a man. He is also reminded that
Schopenhauer regards the imitative instinct as a
vestige of our simian descent.
For his own part, he has always been careful not to
be imitative. At one time of his life he was accus-
tomed to say to him.self ev^ry morning: ''Don't do
what other people do."
This is the individualism of the introvert.
In V, Otto expresses his attitude towards analysis
and the analyst. I am ''shaving" him and not anal-
ysing him. At the outset of an analysis which has
not yet been thoroughly accepted, the subject's sub-
conscious is apt to excogitate some such grip in
order to depreciate the analyst. On the other hand,
apropos of the barber's shop, Otto is reminded that
his mistress was at one time a ladies' hairdresser.
He still thinks that his determination to shave was
(consciously) the outcome of the influence of
Schopenhauer's aesthetic ideas. Subconsciously,
however, there has been operative the same desire
for femininity which had formerly made him wish
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 251
to retain his long locks. In this connection he recalls
an old love affair. His inamorata *' wanted an ef-
feminate man," and she cut off his moustache.
We might suppose that in V the subject is as-
suming a feminine attitude towards the analyst,
and that this might indicate the beginnings of
** transference on to the analyst." In any case, we
must point out that the images relating to the anal-
ysis are strangely contiguous to the images relating
to love. From love and from the analysis the sub-
ject expects what he terms *^a cure"; that is to say,
the victory w^hich will give him extroversion and
**ease."
I had enabled him to recognise in himself the
existence of the tendency towards femininity, and
it was at this juncture that he brought me three
quotations, extremely significant — passages by which
he had been greatly struck when he had read them
in earlier days.
Prom Catulle Mendès, Poiir lire au lain: **What
other poet is so feminine as the divine Amarou, whose
soul had lived in the body of a hundred women?"
From Han Ryner (one of Otto's favourite authors),
Le manuel individualiste: '' Seneca speaks of Epi-
curus as a hero disguised as a woman. ' '
From La Bruyère, Caracères: ''I have known more
than one person who, from thirteen to twenty-two,
wanted to be a girl, a pretty girl, and then to become
The third of these quotations is peculiarly sig-
nificant, inasmuch as it was at the age of twenty-
252 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
two that the subject had his first experience of nor-
mal sexual relations.
VI. One evening, when Otto came away from his
mistress, he was thinking about his own pecuniary posi-
tion, which did not allow him to support her on the
scale he would have liked. — That night he dreamed
that France had gone bankrupt; French money was
now worthless; consequently, he had lost 300 marks.
— He went for a walk in the woods with a friend.
They found an inn there; an orchestra was playing
Viennese music, his favourite music.
France is a symbol for his mistress, who is a
Frenchwoman. The psychoanalyst is also of French
nationality, and there is probably a similar conden-
sation to that which occurred in dream V. It fol-
lows that * ' the bankruptcy of France ' ' may be looked
upon as a new way of depreciating me.
The 300 marks have been lent to a friend in Ger-
many, and Otto is afraid that he will never see them
again. It is a feeling rather than a fact that his
material situation is not good enough for his mis-
tress ; we have to interpret the feeling symbolically ;
it betokens his imperfect adaptation to love and to
life. In addition, France, for him, symbolises
*^ease.'' The whole thing bears on his customary
preoccupations.
A little further on, fresh problems come into view.
Here are the associations of the second part of the
dream.
Going for a vmlk. Otto once lent his mistress a
book by Catulle Mendès containing the story of
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 253
*' Theresa 's Shift" (Theresa, a convert, goes on a
pilgrimage to a place where in earlier days she had
thrown away her shift, feeling she could not be
bothered with it any longer. She is given a relic to
kiss, a relic which is supposed to have fallen from
heaven, and she recognises her own shift). Otto recalls
a walk with his mistress. They entered a Catholic
church. He is fond of the mysticism of Catholic
churches.
The woods. In the region where Otto was born
there is a forest known as Heilige Hallen. (The
name calls up religious ideas.) Schopenhauer men-
tions this forest as having given him an impression of
the sublime.
Inn. The inn in the Place de la Madeleine where the
post-chaises used to pull up.
Post-chaise. A picture postcard. Lovers in the
days of the old regime. They are in a post-chaise
driving through a splendid forest; Cupid is the pos-
tillion.
Madeleine. Someone who had sent him an invitation
to a religious conference at the Madeleine. He did not
go. He has been disgusted by religion because it is in
the hands of ''exploiters."
Orchestra. The Hofkirche in Dresden. An or-
chestra ''playing some of Bach's fugues." — ^When Otto
was apprenticed, the bell-ringers had taken him up into
the belfry. He was frightened, and said to himself:
"If they wanted to kill me here, I shouldn't have a
chance." He had "a horrid drumming in the ears."
All that these fellows had really wanted was a
tip.
Viennese music. His brother, who plays the piano
very well.
254 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Apropos of the ** Viennese music" we may like-
wise note here that this had turned up previously
in the association to dream IV, in connection with
the monkey and the acrobats. Otto had said he was
fond of Viennese music *'in thirds." But he wants
**both voices"; he is ^^not satisfied with the melody
by itself." He added that Viennese music seemed
to him to be Germano-Slav. A little later he re-
marked that his mother was of German race, but
his father was ^*a Polish immigrant." Finally he
said that he was fond of the Viennese, who were com-
paratively subtle (rather like the French) ; he did
not care for the North Germans.
We are now enabled to understand what are the
two voices to which he refers, and which he wants
to have in Viennese music. These two voices are
within himself; they represent the mother and the
father respectively. We grasp the significance of
various terms polarised round these two ideas of
the mother and the father. On the side of the
** mother" we have Germany and introversion; on
the side of the *^ father" we have the Slav and the
Frenchman, the foreigner, extroversion. The terms
grouped round either pole are interchangeable, and
serve to symbolise one another.
Symbolically, Otto experiences the desire for the
**father." — He is not satisfied with the melody by
itself, the melody representing the higher pitched
voice, a woman's voice. And yet he does not wish
to achieve complete extroversion. He needs *'both
voices"; he wants to fulfil his whole nature, and
has no idea of renouncing himself.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 255
All this throws light on the last dream. Origi-
nally Otto had religious aspirations; in the termi-
nology of the psychoanalytical school, his repressed
instincts underwent a religious sublimation. He
was, however, *' disgusted'' with religion because it
seemed to him a form of * ^ exploitation. ' ' In the
associations to the dream we find two symbols for
this idea of exploitation: Theresa's shift; and the
bell-ringers who are on the look out for a tip. Be-
sides, both Theresa and Madeleine [Magdalen] are
converted sinners ; they embody the idea of the sub-
limation of instinct. But this sublimation culmi-
nates in disillusionment. Theresa's experience
shows her the fraud underlying what is supposed to
be a relic. In like manner. Otto discerns the ** ex-
ploitation" which he believes to underlie religion.
There then occurs in him a phenomenon to which
psychoanalysts have not hitherto paid sufficient at-
tention, the repression of a sublimated instinct. In
this case, it is the repression of the religious senti-
ment. Schopenhauer then becomes a substitute for
religion. A phrase of Schopenhauer's concerning
the forest, the ^'Holy Precincts [Heilige Hallen],"
represents a transition from the religious sentiment
to the philosophical sentiment.
To-day, however, Schopenhauer in his turn is be-
ing subjected to critical examination. Otto has
learned the danger of pessimism, and he has an
aspiration towards life. Ought he, then, unhesitat-
ingly to throw himself into life, into extroversion?
No. * * France has gone bankrupt. " '' Both voices ' '
are essential. Otto cannot renounce sublimation ; he
256 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
cannot repudiate that which philosophy, the inner
life, individualism, have brought to him. Hence
there is a crisis, which the dream expresses, and at-
tempts to solve.
The image of his mistress is then condensed into
a walk towards a church; the post-chaise of which
Cupid is the postillion drives through a ** splendid
forest" like the one which had aroused the admira-
tion of Schopenhauer and Otto. In a word, the
images of love fuse with those of religion and of the
** sublime.'' The coarser forms of sexuality (the
monkey and the acrobats) have become impossible
henceforward. Otto needs a love which can satisfy
his spiritual aspirations, one in which ^^both voices"
are present.
The analysis of this dream seems to have marked
a decisive stage. Hitherto Otto had been inclined
to fear that the *^cure" would demand from him a
repudiation of the inner life and an acceptance of
crude instinct. It was natural, therefore, that he
should feel a certain repulsion towards the method
and towards the ''cure" itself. He has now come
to understand that no such demand will be made
of him.
Here we have another dream stressing the disgust
with which sexuality inspires him.
VII. I go into a little room, one well known to me,
in the house where I was born. Some ladies are seated
round a table in this room . . . doiag needlework.
In their midst is a Frenchwoman. ... A detail: In
the room there is a privy.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 257
Here we again encounter the **Frenc]iwoman/'
and also the ** needles'' of dream II; we already
know their significance. The repulsive side is
bluntly expressed by the symbol of the **pri\^.''
Furthermore, as so often happens, the disgust is
linked with fear. Apropos of this dream. Otto re-
calls the following memories of childhood :
When he was eleven years old, Otto had stayed out
late for a lark. The door of the room he saw in the
dream had been locked against him. Not being able
to get in, he had been seized with panic.
When he was seven years old, he was in the passage
near the same room. . . . One of his sisters had said
**bo'' to frighten him. He was very timid in those
days, and had been scared.
We will continue the analysis by a brief study of
some of the works of art which have made a great
impression on Otto.
Associations to an engraving by Ludwig Richter,
Little Red Riding Hood in the Forest, leads us to
an image of an * * old witch. ' ' Then comes the figure
of his maternal grandmother, of whom he had been
very fond just as he was of his mother. He always
ran to his mother directly dinner was finished, and
everyone made fun of him for this. The reminis-
cence shows very well how his fondness for his
mother made him ridiculous in society, just as we
have seen that he was a butt when on a country
excursion with other young folk (II). Flight to the
mother and flight to solitude are akin.
Next we come to one of Grimm's tales, The Wolf
258 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
and the Seven Little Eads. This story, one which
Otto was fond of reading as a child, is like Bed
Riding Hood in many respects. The wolf eats the
little kids, just as the wolf-grandmother eats the
little girl. The ^'wolf,^' a cousin of the *^ witch''
and of the ^'grandmother,'' appears in Otto's sub-
conscious as a symbol of what has been called the
*' dread mother," a symbol of the introversion which
swallows like an abyss. In the little girl, or the
little kids, eaten by the wolf, we have a fantasy of
return to the mother's womb. Otto also recalls that
the wolf in Grimm's tale had whitened its paw and
had eaten a great lump of chalk to ' * soften its voice. ' '
This brings us again into touch with the fantasies
anent singing (I). Otto is careful to point out that,
in the tale, the goat rips up the wolf and the little
kids reappear; the introversion is not irremediable.
Similar results were secured with another of
Grimm's tales, *' Snow-Drop, " or *' Little Snow-
White."
AU this part of the analysis confirms the existence
of a strong ' 'maternal complex," linked to the re-
pression of virility. The complex has the well-
knoT\Ti characteristics.
When I had questioned him about these works of
art, it spontaneously occurred to Otto to bring me a
page from Schopenhauer's writings, a passage by
which he had been greatly struck, and which he had
read and re-read. He showed me his own French
translation of the extract. [The standard English
version runs as follows :]
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 259
Because beauty accompanied with grace is the prin-
cipal object of sculpture, it loves nakedness, and al-
lows clothing only in so far as it does not conceal the
form. . . .
I may be allowed, in passing, to insert here a com-
parison that is Yery pertinent to the arts we are discuss-
ing. It is this: as the beautiful bodily form is seen
to the greatest advantage when clothed in tlie lightest
way, or mdeed without any clothing at all, and there-
fore a very handsome man, if he had also taste and the
courage to follow it, would go about almost naked,
clothed on]y after the manner of the ancients ; so every-
one who possesses a beautiful and rich mind will al-
ways express himself in the most natural, direct, and
simple way, concerned, if it be possible, to com-
municate his thoughts to others, and thus relieve the
loneliness that he must feel in such a world as this.
And conversely, poverty of mind, confusion, and per-
versity of thought, will clothe itself in the most far-
fetched expressions and the obscurest forms of speech,
in order to wrap up in difficult and pompous phrase-
ology small, trifling, insipid, or commonplace thoughts ;
like a man who has lost the majesty of beauty, and,
trying to make up for the deficiency by means of cloth-
ing, seeks to hide the insignificancy or ugliness of his
person under barbaric finery, tinsel, feathers, ruffles,
cuffs, and mantles. . . .^
This man whose beauty is perfect, and who would
prefer to go nude, is associated in Otto's mind with
a statue of Apollo in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence
1 The World as Will and Idea, by Arthur Schopenhauer, trans-
lated from the German by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp Triibner,
London, 1883, vol. i., p. 296. [Book III, $ 47.]
260 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
(he showed me a photograph of it). These two im-
pressions have engendered in him a concrete vision.
'*It is,'^ he said, *'a vision of what may be called
a free and noble ease of manner/'
The last words lead us to an aphorism from the
old Spanish book translated by Schopenhauer,
Baltasar Graciants El oraculo manual y arte de
prudencia, a system of rules for the conduct of life.
The title of the aphorism in Schopenhauer's version
is **Edle freie Unbefangenheit bei Allem/' which
Otto translates by ^* Libre et noble désinvolture"
[Free and noble ease of manner]. Apropos of this
**ease of manner," the Spanish author writes:
'*It is the life of talent, the breath of oratory, the
soul of action, the ornament of ornaments. All the
other graces serve to adorn Nature, but this is grace
itself. It shows itself also in thought. Before all, it
is a gift of Nature. It owes little to education, for it
stands above education.
' * It is something more than levity ; it is tantamount
to daring."
In Otto's copy of Schopenhauer's German trans-
lation, the last phrase had been underlined.
We perceive the elements out of which his ideal
of *^ease" has been formed. The existence of this
ideal shows that he has never completely surrendered
himself to his introversion; that he has always
wanted to escape from it. Furthermore, the passage
from Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 261
is significant in that it shows how this *'ease'' of
thought and expression is associated in Otto^s mind
with the nudity of the human body. This is the tie
we observed at the outset of the analysis.
We must note, however, that this ideal, in which
Otto has objectified his desire to get out of himself,
is in many respects linked with his introverted state
of mind. For, first of all, the ideal is grounded
upon the study of Schopenhauer. Next, the statue
of the young Apollo has, as Otto himself declared,
somewhat effeminate characteristics. Here we en-
counter once more a latent homosexuality, an in-
clination towards effeminacy. When asked for as-
sociations with the above-quoted passage from
Graciants handbook. Otto produced a phrase from
Feuchtersleben's Zur Diàtetik der Seele (Chapter
III) — the book which made so profound an impres-
sion upon Carl Spitteler in youth. Here is the
phrase :
*' Fantasy is feminine by nature. The feminine life
has more staying power than the masculine life; the
result may well be . . . greater physical force linked
with delicacy and purity. '^
The following reminiscence was another of Otto's
associations in this connection. He spoke of a
friend :
A man extremely orderly, but of a miserly disposi-
tion. . . . Nevertheless he was fond of good living,
though it upset his digestion — as so often happens with
crass materialists. — He had an attack of influenza, was
262 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
taken to hospital, and at night during the delirium of
fever he jumped out of the window. Death was in-
stantaneous.
A few moments later, Otto made the following
reflection (in connection with a thought of Schopen-
hauer's) :
** Hullo," I think, ''might one not say that greed
for money, regarded as one of the lower forces of mat-
ter, ruins the hody ? We are told that money leads to
corruption. Well, just look at the faces of most of our
profiteers !'*
We know, through other associations, that the idea
of money is linked with that of sexuality, of virility.
We may say that in Otto the trend towards
effeminacy is even incorporated in his ideal of
**ease,'' where we discern once more, not a repudia-
tion, but an equilibrium (the ^'two voices''). Here
the trend towards effeminacy is spiritualised. The
feminine traits which the subject wishes to cultivate
in himself are *' purity and delicacy." He also
aspires towards the peculiar force characteristic of
the * ^feminine temperament." He finds its descrip-
tion, on the one hand in Feuchtersleben, who speaks
of ** natures woven of ether and moonlight" but
capable of astounding everyone by their staying
power, and on the other hand in my own book Sug-
gestion and Autosuggestion (French original, p.
115; English translation, p. 138) :
**In the foregoing pages, the writer has paid his
tribute to the privileged mental position of certain
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 263
temperaments, women, children, and artists being
typical of these. It is possible that . . . devotees of
an overstrained 'positivism' will find his remarks a
trifle irritating. . . . But it is none the less true that
the outcropping which is the essential characteristic
of such temperaments must be cultivated by all who
desire to avail themselves of the powers of well-con-
trolled autosuggestion.''
Thus in the very method of re-education, Otto has
been able to discover a justification for his trend,
and a way by which it can be guided in a useful direc-
tion. In autosuggestion, no less than in the Apollo
of the Uffizi Gallery, he finds a synthesis of ^* femi-
ninity" and ^*ease" — a harmony of the **two
In the passage from Gracian, Otto underlined the
phrase concerning ^*ease of manner."
It is something more than levity, it is tantamount
to daring.
In this connection he tells me that in childhood
he was at first rather cheeky, but that he subsequently
grew timid. How did this come about? We are
helped to understand the change by an interesting
reminiscence.
During my apprenticeship I was kept under a some-
what Prussian discipline. The first apprentice played
the part of non-com. One day he and I were carrjdng
some pieces of machinery to a big brewery to set them
up there. The first apprentice, after having explained
264. STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
to me how he was going to carry out the work, said:
*'That ought to go all right!'' I answered that I was
not so sure, for some unexpected difficulty might crop
up.
Our little dispute was reported to the employer's
son. He told me I was a slacker, and that if I ever
said anything of the sort when I was working with
him, he would ''give me what for."
Henceforward I watched my words carefully, so that
my mother said that I had become tongue-tied. Be-
sides, I didn't enjoy myself at all in my life as ap-
prentice.
The master and the first apprentice would appear
to have been condensed respectively with Otto's
father and his eldest brother. ''That ought to go
all right'' evoked in Otto the idea of the infringe-
ment of Belgian neutrality in 1914.
No doubt our Prussian swashbucklers likewise said
to themselves: "That ought to go all right, to invade
France through Belgium."
When the invasion failed to achieve its purpose,
Otto felt as if he had got even with the first appren-
tice.
He recalls also that in the master's house there
was a canary. He asked whether it was a cock or
a hen. The question was considered rather indeli-
cate and this experience made him more and more
reserved. He was told that the canary could not
sing because it had grown too fat.
We have got back to the first motif. To the re-
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PARENTS 265
pression of virility (in the form of sexuality and
the combative instinct) there is superadded the in-
fluence of an authority which recalls the paternal
authority. No doubt the incidents of his appren-
ticeship exercised an influence in repressing spon-
taneity, but this influence would have been much less
powerful had not the incidents undergone condensa-
tion with deeper and more secret processes.
Apropos of the words ^'that ought to go all right,"
Otto further notes that this might be called a formula
of ease. It is also a formula of autosuggestion. And
this brings us back to the Uffizi Apollo. But here
the ** virile" side, formerly repressed, is more ap-
parent; it is a formula of the ''swashbuckler."
Otto, then, is an introvert with a philosophic
trend; he is strongly attached to the mother. The
awkwardness and constraint, the lack of spontaneity,
of which he complains, are linked with a general
refusal of virility and social life. But this same
refusal has contributed to the development of the
inner life and of meditation.
The analysis enabled the subject to dissociate the
two categories of results ; to rectify the former with-
out repudiating the latter; to gain a more perfect
adaptation to external life without renouncing his
internal conquests.
The balance and ease which Otto wished to ac-
quire had been practically attained after the first
few sittings. He continued the analysis, partly in
order to gain perfect mastery, and partly because
the study was interesting to him as a man of philo-
sophic temperament.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION, AND THE INSTINCT
FOR MOTHERHOOD
Although many people speak of Freud as a **pan-
sexualist,'* he has categorically declared, as we
know, that dreams may be the expression of other
wishes than those relating to the sexual instinct —
even when the term sexual is used with the wide
connotations which he gives to it. It might indeed
be foreseen that all the instincts would find expres-
sion in dreams. Here is a huge domain for ex-
plorers.
In the present chapter I assemble four cases, the
first of which (autopsychoanalysis) deals with
dreams aroused by the instinct of self-preservation;
they are concerned with the obsessive idea of death
during pulmonary tuberculosis. The other three in-
stances are concerned with the instinct for mother-
hood. In Yvonne and in Renée the dreams occur
when the subject is pregnant. In Martha, they relate
only to a wish for motherhood ; but this wish is ac-
companied by a physiological condition (menstrual
irregularity) of which the wish is a contributory
cause. In all these cases, therefore, the dreams are
connected with some definite physiological state ; but
we are not entitled to regard them as a direct ex-
pression of the condition of the bodily organs, as a
sort of internal perception. A perception of this
266
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 267
kind, especially one aroused by kinassthetic sensa-
tions, may doubtless play a part; but it is certain
that, in the causation of dreams, disquietude concern-
ing an organ is more important than the objective
condition of that organ. A woman who wants to
have a baby may dream of being pregnant just as
may a woman who is really pregnant. A consump-
tive who has been dreaming about his lungs night
after night, may cease to have such dreams directly
he has been told that examination shows his sputum
to be free from tubercle bacilli; yet there has been
no sudden change in his physiological state; there
has merely been a change in his mental condition.
It is true that the instinct of self-preservation and
the instinct for motherhood are not normally ^'cen-
sored'' like the sexual instinct. They may be more
or less repressed. Above all, impressions relating
to them (the fear of death, for example) may be re-
pressed— ^may be repressed in the strict sense of the
term, under the influence of a moral sentiment.
This happens in our first case, but the repression
has not been vigorous, and the uneasiness is mani-
fest in the waking state. It may happen that the
disquietude shown in the dream is one of which the
subject is fully conscious. In Yvonne, for instance,
we have a dread that the baby will be stillborn, or
that the doctor will not arrive in time ; in Martha,
we have the longing to be a mother; in Renée, the
unwillingness to be a mother. Nevertheless, the
dreams assume s3mibolical forms. In especial, the
organs concerned, the lungs, etc., are represented by
symbols.
268 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
In several of his adolescent subjects, Auguste
Lemaître has noted symbolical dreams which he
found it difficult, without straining the explanation,
to account for by the theory of repression.^ Diffi-
culty vanishes if we admit, as we have been led to
admit, that symbolisation is the outcome of the gen-
eral laws of the imagination; that repression makes
use of symbolism and reinforces it, but does not
create it.
In the dreams aroused by the instinct of self-
preservation or the instinct for motherhood, it is
possible that other instincts are simultaneously at
work. As concerns some dreams, this is certainly
the case. In Renée, the refusal of motherhood is
linked with a general psychosexual inclination to
refuse femininity, either through latent homosexu-
ality (Freud) or through masculine protest (Adler).
Of course, we are always entitled to suspect, in the
case of any dream, that unseen instincts are at work.
But it would be absurd to insist upon finding them
there, and to explain the symbolisation as a mani-
festation of repressed instincts, when, symbolisation
or no symbolisation, these instincts would surely re-
veal themselves if present.
1. Autopsy choanaly sis
Dreams during an Attack of Pulmonary
Tuberculosis.
These dreams and fragments of dreams are the
transparent symbols of an obsessive disquietude,
^ Lemaître, op. cit., pp. 14, 21.
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 269
that of illness and death. In the waking state, this
disquietude was partially repressed by a deliberate
optimism. The affected organ, the lung, is some-
times denoted by a strange and lucid symbolism.
The symbols in question belong to the category of
*^ organic symbols'' studied long ago by Schemer.^
Many of the dreams about to be recorded contain
obvious allusions to other preoccupations than the
illness. These matters will not be discussed here.
I, I was out walking alone; I had a book in my
hand, I was going to read. The sky was gloomy and
overcast. Before me stretched the brown, damp,
clayey expanse of the plough-lands, and also in front
of me was the dazzling whiteness of a straight road
whicA my path, mounting all the time, was to rejoin
higher up. Suddenly from my left, in the ravine,
from the direction of the town, — for there was a town,
— came the noise of shouting ; I remembered that there
was a war. Then, close at hand, not more than twenty
paces away, I saw a grey-coated man, a shadowy figure,
apparently in uniform. I realised that I had been
sentenced as a spy, and that I was about to be shot.
The man took aim. I saw what was imminent with-
out any sense of fear. I watched the smoke at the
muzzle of the rifle; I staggered; I was dead. Then
I found myself with a book in my hand, seated in a
room, and reading the sequel of the events in which
I had just played a leading part. The being who had
recently died, and who was myself, appeared in my
book in the third person.
^ Schemer, Das Leben des Traumes, 1861, pp. 114 et seq.,
quoted by Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1918, pp. 69-73.
270 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Often enough, in fact, I walked in this way hold-
ing a book. At the same time it was my custom to
scribble notes as I walked. When, inadvertently, I
approached any of the forts, I w^as always regarded
with suspicion; was challenged, and asked for my
papers. Of course a few words were enough to
clear up the difficulty. What annoyed me most on
these occasions was the interruption to my work.
In my dream this episode assumes a graver form,
for it culminates in my being shot. The soldier
who shoots me is clad in grey, and produces on me
the impression that he is a '^shadow,'' a phantom;
everything about him calls up the idea of death.
The war, symbolised by this soldier, has been the
determining cause of the illness.
The shouts of war come from a town lying at the
bottom of a ravine. My own home was in the coun-
try, in a place overlooking a large town (my native
city), situated at the bottom of a valley like the
town of my dream. I lived in the country for hy-
gienic reasons, and the **town" represented for me
the unwholesome atmosphere in which I had spent
my youth, and which had been one of the causes of
my illness.
The book in my hand is intimately associated with
my work. The war first of all, and subsequently my
illness, troubled me mainly as hindrances to the work
for which I lived.
The path by which I am ascending in my dream
is a difficult one, whilst higher up I catch a glimpse
of the **road'^ — the straight and easy line of action
which I should like to reach, but which I fear I shall
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 271
never reach. The damp weather, which I know to
be unfavourable to my health, recalls my illness.
Finally I undergo a sort of resurrection, with the
book in my hand. This symbolises the wish and the
hope that I shall survive, through the instrumen-
tality of a work which will outlive me.
II. I was on a terrace which in the rear seemed to
communicate with residential flats. It was like an
enormous veranda. Beside me, in the shadow, to my
left, was my mother, hardly more visible than a phan-
tom. She had some needlework in her hands. It was
woolwork; the wool was soft, and of a dull grey
colour. I was not frightened; we were talking
quite simply. We did not say much; my mother,
especially, said very little; hers was an almost
mute presence. I was lying flat on my back, my anns
stretched wide, the better to breathe; and I thus
breathed in the freshness of a starry night, more
beautiful and fresher than I had ever known before.
It was infinitely good and sweet. I watched in one of
the constellations an oval image the shape of certain,
holy pictures, and I could make out there the face of a
man bearded as my father was bearded, inclining for-
wards as he looked earthward. I fancied that it must
be St. Joseph. I think that the man had in his hand a
yellow lily (the one known as St. Joseph's lily).
Below, in the bottom of a valley, was the town.
Here I could see lights springing up and moving
about, as if a torch-light tattoo had been in progress.
Now came shouts from the same quarter: *'Fire!
Fire!" In my dream I understood these words as if
the cry had been: **To arms!" Then I realised that
the men who were shouting had seen an enemy aero-
272 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
plane, and that they were about to fire. I think I said
to my mother: ^'Perhaps I shall be hit by a bomb/*
But neither she nor I stirred. Still lying flat on my
back with arms outstretched, I breathed the night.
Then I felt a severe blow full in the chest. It was the
bomb. I awoke with a start. I could feel my bed, but
at the same time I had a sort of hallucination of the
sense of touch, for I felt upon my chest the contact and
the passage of some cold object. Knowing myself to
be awake, I was aware for a moment of physical fear
in all its power.
My position, the outstretched arms, and my need
for breath, clearly symbolises the illness; so does
the death-stroke received full in the chest. In addi-
tion, I recognise several of the symbols which have
been explained in the interpretation of the first
dream : the war, the town in the valley from whichi
the shouts come. The cries of war have been re-
placed by the cry, '*Fire!'^: this suggests that the
cry ^*To arms!*' had first presented itself to my
imagination, but had been rejected for some reason
(perhaps because its meaning was too obvious), and
the cry **Fire!" had taken its place. But the sub-
stitution had been incomplete, so that when I heard
the cry * * Fire ! ' ' I understood it to mean * * To arms ! ' '
The same substitution would explain the torchlight
tattoo. On the evenings of the French national fes-
tival I had often watched the regiments carrying
torches as they returned to barracks. Foot-soldiers,
naturally associated with war, normally carry arms ;
just as the cry *'To arms!" has been replaced by
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 273
the cry **Fire!'' so the soldiers, in place of carry-
ing arms, carry torches.
My parents are dead. My mother, in this dream,
appeared in the grey, phantasmal, and mute form
which so often symbolises the idea of death. The
soldier of the first dream was also wraithlike. The
grey woolwork symbolises the work of the Fates.
"When my father died I was a child, and I naively
represented the dead as leaning forward out ot
heaven towards the living, like the St. Joseph of my
dream. The St. Joseph's lily grew in the flower-
beds of our garden, and my father was particularly
fond of this flower. Finally, in the year when my
father died, I had a mathematical master who gave
me my first notions of astronomy and taught me to
admire the stars. The first constellation I learned
to recognise was Cassiopeia. I knew that in Catho-
lic astronomy this constellation had been called St.
Mary, because of its resemblance to a capital M.
The oval image of my dream appeared in the part
of the sky where, in childhood, I had seen this con-
stellation. St. Mary is associated with my mother,
just as St. Joseph is associated with my father.
This oval image is connected with another mem-
ory of childhood, and all these allusions to my par-
ents give expression to my feelings towards them
in childhood ; the analysis in this direction would be
a lengthy matter. Suffice it to note that the ten-
dency to introversion associated with the maternal
complex was at this period accentuated by illness.
The tendency and the illness were a retreat (cf. the
274 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
torchlight tattoo ^) in face of life. The whole dream
is dominated by the idea of death.
The calm and beautiful night, with the stars shin-
ing brilliantly, recalls the nights when I had an
enthusiasm for astronomy, and above all for the
feeling of boundlessness and eternity which astron-
omy arouses. The same feeling is aroused by death
when we contemplate death in a spirit of religious
calm, and under the aspect of eternal or universal
life rather than under the aspect of destruction.
Thus, by a remarkably rich symbolism, my dream
gave expression to something which I would not ad-
mit in the waking state; to the fact that my mind
was obsessed by the idea of death. At the close of
the dream there even came the animal dread of
death, which had hitherto been veiled in contempla-
tive calm; this latter, also, was a real feeling, but
was over-emphasised in order to conceal the equally
real fear.
I am inclined to explain the last detail of the dream
by supposing that when the sense of sight had fully
awakened, the sense of touch was still slumbering.
III. I was standing at a closed window ; I had a feel-
ing of suffocation. I opened the window to get fresh
air, but the feeling of suffocation continued. I saw
that the shutters were closed; I pushed at them; the
left shutter opened with a bang, and was caught back
against the wall ; the right shutter, as often as I pushed
it open, was blown to by the wind. At last I thought
^ There is a word-play bere which cannot be conveyed in the
translation. In French the torchlight tattoo is a "retreat," une
retraite aux flambeaux. — Teanslators' Note.
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 275
that I had got it in its place against the wall, but again
it was blown to. Leaning out, I saw that the catch
had been wrenched from the wall, and that
the wall was crumbling where the catch had been.
The wall was built of oolitic limestone, a stone which
quickly becomes black at the surface, but which is
white when freshly broken, so that any recent fracture
is conspicuous; such a recent fracture was obvious
where I was looking. When struggling with the wind,
I had said these words to fortify myself: ''After all,
I am three hundred times as strong as destiny.'*
While pronouncing the word ''destiny," I know that
I was really speaking of the wind.
The disease is easily recognised in the sense of
suffocation. The two shutters, one of which opens
while the other is obstinate, immediately make me
think of my lungs, for I know that one lung is much
more gravely affected than the other. But whereas
the most affected lung is the left, it is the right
shutter which is stubborn ; here we have a symmetri-
cal transference.^
Even in the dream, I called the wind by its true
name, destiny. The obliteration of the object in
the symbol was incomplete, just as in the previous
dream the obliteration of the symbol ^*To arms!'*
^ In the first dream the town where the war was going on, and
in the second dream my dead mother, had been on my left side,
and I had twice noted this detail without attaching any importance
to it, and without attempting to explain it.
As far as concerns the shutters, which are symmetrical objects
like the lungs, and which open like the lungs for breathing, the
symbolism is more transparent; the censorship, therefore, has
recourse to a symmetrical transference which did not occur in
the two other dreams.
276 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
in the new symbol ^'Fire'^ had been incomplete.^
The wind, then, is the part destiny plays in life gen-
erally, and in the illness specially.
This wind, a symbol of the disease, sjoithetises a
number of reminiscences and impressions ; the wind
induces a sense of suffocation; I know it to be in-
jurious to me; etc. In addition, it recalls to my
mind a poem by Benoist-Hanappier, under whom I
worked at the university of Nancy, and who died
(note the relevant detail) of consumption. His
death made a great impression upon my mind, and
it was a few days later that I read the poem. It
opens with the verse:
There was a wind, a high wind,
and it ends with the stanza :
When I die, when I die,
I think that a strong, gloomy wind
Will wail despairingly,
Echoing the invisible ill,
When I die, when I die.
The crumbling wall symbolises the damaged lung ;
when I lean out of the window I discover that this
is the cause of the trouble. The oolitic limestone,
with its granular structure, is chosen because of its
resemblance to the structure of the lungs.
We have still to explain the number *Hhree hun-
dred" in the phrase: ^'*I am three hundred times as
strong as destiny." Other dreams lead me to sup-
^ A substitution was effected in the symbols, but not in the
intellectual interpretation of the symbols.
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 277
pose that it is an allusion to tlie three hundred Spar-
tans who fought under Leonidas. My contest with
the disease seemed to me preeminently a struggle
of moral energy. This outlook had been confirmed
by the results I had secured through autosuggestion
in the way of improving sleep and checking cough.
My first understanding of the nature of moral energy
had come to me, during my classical studies, in strik-
ing instances from Greek history. The most impres-
sive of these had been the example of the three hun-
dred Spartans who blocked the road of destiny.
IV. I was on my way back from a long walk ; it was
l&te; the sun had just set. I reached the foot of a
steep hill. The road ran straight up the hill like a
Roman road; it was worn into runnels; it vanished
abruptly at the top of the ascent.
At the bottom of the hill was a signpost, with the
legend * * Dommartemont, 12 kilometres." I said to
myself that I still had a long way to go, and that it
would be hard work. But I knew my way home from
Dommartemont.
I set out. But I had made only a few steps forward
when my heart began to beat violently ; flushes of heat
rose to my face ; I felt that I was going to fall. Then
I awoke.
The close of this dream shows that it relates to
my illness. The palpitation and the flushes of heat
are real symptoms ; they play the same part as the
sense of suffocation in the previous dream.
A few days earlier, I had seen a Roman road.
This reminiscence served me as a symbol. The
278 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Koniaii road spontaneously called up the following
associations : stupendous tasks, like those performed
by the Eomans; the labours of Hercules.
Immediately the twelve kilometres of the signpost
made me think of the twelve labours of Hercules
(analogous to the three hundred Spartans).
Dommartemont is the name of a village in the re-
gion where I was born. Thence I know my **way
home," that is to say, I know how to find my way
back to the life of former days. In addition, by an
auditory association, the word calls up Montmartre,
the martyrs' hill. The ascent is a heroic one.
Evening, the approach of night, symbolises a pre-
mature death.
The work of the Eomans, the labours of Hercules,
the heroism of the martyrs — ^here are so many meta-
phors to describe the hugeness of the task and my
own weakness in face of it, a weakness which I was
only half willing to admit in the waking state.
V. I was on a country road. Suddenly the wind
became so violent that I was blown to the ground. I
wanted to make my way back, crawliQg on hands and
knees if needs must, towards the houses from which
I had come. The wind was too much for me. My
movements were like those of one who is swimming
against a stream too strong for him, and the current
swept me away.
The road, the wind, the houses to which I was
trying to return, are all symbols which can be ex-
plained by the preceding dream. My desperate
struggle in the dust of the road was strangely remi-
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 279
niscent of the close of Spitteler's poem Papillons,
which I had been reading attentively not long before
the dream.' In this poem, the butterfly, after fruit-
less efforts, falls dying into the dust on the road.
In my dream I felt as if I were beating my wings
like a butterfly.
VI. I was in an examination hall and had just
finished writing my composition. I had begun to
write a fair copy, when behind me I heard the voice
of Monsieur B., my old master of the lycée Louis le
Grand, asking for the compositions. I made up my
mind to give him the rough copy. At this moment I
heard Monsieur B. saying goodbye to those who were
going out. It seemed as if it were a farewell class.
The idea is barely disguised: a premature con-
clusion; an unfinished piece of work; one has to
make the best of a bad job. It must be noted that
while I was in Monsieur B.'s class my health broke
down, so that my studies were interrupted before
the close of the school year.
The next dream, classed as VII, really consists of
three successive dreams, which were dreamed in one
night as three acts of the same drama. I awoke
after each act, and after the first and second acts
I had recourse to autosuggestion in order to over-
come the painful impression left by the nightmare.
The third act signifies a victory, as it were ; a happy
ending.
^A French translation of this poem was subsequently (May,
1916) published in "Le Carmel" of Geneva, under the title
Moine (monk).
280 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
VII. 1. I am holding a strange little marionette.
As I look at it, its body becomes hollowed out here and
there into holes and cavities, until there is nothing left
but a head, where two similar holes soon appear, so
that it is now a death's head, while of the body noth-
ing remains beyond a wire skeleton.
2. I have just bought one of Spitteler's books. I am
with some friends. We seem to be coming back from
a class. We are talking and larking. Apparently
the book falls ; anyhow, it is spoiled in some way, and
its back becomes pierced with holes, just like those
which appeared in the marionette of the previous
dream. I am in doubt what to do, and then I make up
my mind to change the book. One of my friends says :
**You are quite right; unless it is in good condition,
no one will be able to read it when you are dead.^'
3. In the last dream I am in a room ; a butterfly is
fluttering in distress against a closed window. I open
the window and the insect instantly flies away. I am
surprised to see how intelligent it is, how quickly it
finds the right road. Its deliverance makes me very
happy.
The holes, the cavities, which invade the mari-
onette, or the back of the book, hardly need explana-
tion. The marionette and its wire skeleton sym-
bolise our own frailty as parts of the universal
mechanism, that mechanism of which the ravages of
disease are among the effects.
The book (borrowed from the symbolism of dream
I) represents my work. I had seen Spitteler
shortly before, and had been much impressed by the
vigour of his old age. He seemed to me one who had
enjoyed the whole of a great life to perform a great
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 281
work. A great life followed by a vigorous old age
were what I desired for myself, but my illness
threatened to rob me of them.
In the terminal dream, a butterfly has taken the
place of Spitteler's book. The first of Spitteler's
books I read was Papillons (V). But whereas in
the second act of this three-act dream drama I had
merely decided to do something, *^to change my
book,'^ in act three I triumph. I am surprised at
the close that an animal should have so much intel-
ligence. This makes me think of my psychological
interest in the unconscious, in the subconscious, in
connection with which, suggestion, on the one hand,
and psychoanalysis on the other, have revealed to
me an intelligent activity of an amazing character.
As I have already explained, I consider the triumph
to have been mainly achieved by autosuggestion.
VIII. I was in a house to which I have often had to
go in the course of my professional duties. Further-
more, it was the house of a man of science who has
done excellent work. I hear cries of ''Fire!" I go
out. People are fighting the flames; they get the
better of the conflagration. But whereas the front of
the house is practically uninjured, I see that, inside,
the left half has been destroyed. The other half has
been saved. It contains a large room, w^here the life of
the house can be reconstructed on modest lines.
The **house" is a fresh image associated with
my work. The cry **Fire!" is borrowed from the
symbolism of dream II. The two halves of the
house are the lungs once more. I may add that the
282 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
appearance of the burned house strongly recalled
the crumbling wall in dream III. Although the
symbols undergo a certain development, there is a
fixity of aspect which assists in their interpretation.
2, Yvonne
Fears Concerning Childbirth.
Like the previous instance, this is not the analysis
of a * * case. ' ' It is merely the analysis of the dreams
of a woman during the last weeks of pregnancy,
dreams which give expression in a rather remark-
able fashion to certain disquietudes relating to child-
birth.
Yvonne has various dreads. One of them is that
her baby will be born prematurely. In several
dreams she gets into a tramcar with a child and lets
it drop. Some of the associations suggest that these
dreams give expression to the before-mentioned
fear. But, in other dreams, other fears are ex-
pressed in ways that cannot be mistaken.
One night when Yvonne fell asleep she was ob-
sessed with the dread that her baby would be still-
born. She had just been chasing a large bluebottle
fly; it was nearly dead, but it had escaped into a
crevice. That night, she had the following dream :
I. Yvonne had a suppurating wound on the wrist,
shaped like a lentil ; and several transparent spots, also
shaped like lentils, on the arm. She was with her
mother, but in her own house. She was going to live
somewhere else, in the house of a woman rather like
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 283
the one who sometimes attends the neighbouring peas-
ant women in their confinements. Pus is squeezed out
of the wound several times, but at the bottom of it
there is a squashed fly which won't come out. The
woman in whose house Yvonne has gone to live says
that the hour has not yet come, but that the orifice will
enlarge of itself at the right moment.
The allusion to the confinement is so plainly ex-
pressed in the dream that comment is superfluous.
Is it necessary to stress the description of this ori-
fice, which '^will enlarge of itself at the right mo-
ment''?
Besides the dread of the stillbirth, we can detect
in this dream another uneasiness, one of which the
subject is also fully conscious. She cannot make up
her mind whether to stay at home for her confine-
ment, or to enter a maternity hospital. She lives
in the country, **a long way from everywhere," and
she is afraid of being taken unawares.
One Thursday evening, when she fell asleep, her
mind was occupied with the problem of what would
happen should her baby be bom on a Sunday, when
nothing would be ready, when all the shops would
be closed, and when it might be difficult to get a doc-
tor. That night she had the following dream:
II. The stove-pipe is choked to overflowing. It is
Sunday. No chimney-sweep to be had. She hurries
off to find one in a street where there lives someone
whose address she had made a note of, in case she
could not get a midwife.
284 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
This transparent dream was dreamed during tlie
night of Thursday-Friday. It is not unlikely that
the subject's disquietude, considerable enough to set
the subconscious at work even during sleep, may
have acted as a spontaneous suggestion. At any
rate, labour pains began on Saturday afternoon, and
the child was born the same night — before midnight,
however.
3. Renée
Eefusal of Femininity and of Motherhood
Kenée has long suffered from nervous and sexual
troubles. She says that her father was extremely
neuropathic, that he had ideas of persecution and
believed himself very unfortunate. She herself suf-
fers from sexual impotence (frigidity). Once only
has intercourse with her husband (whom she loves)
been *^normaP'; ever since, she has had to avail
herself of masturbation to secure complete gratifica-
tion, which even then is difficult to obtain. Her sister
suffers from a similar impotence (frigidity).
Eenée is also subject to obsessions. Sometimes
she will fancy herself to be so ugly that she cannot
bear to look at herself. She has a fixed idea that
she suffers from goitre. She is frequently afflicted
by nervous pains, little attacks of nervous irritation,
in the cardiac region, round the flanks, and in the
chest, attended by a sense of suffocation.
Eenée was pregnant. Her state in this respect
was the chief cause of her disquietude, and her gen-
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 285
eral nervous condition was most unsatisfactory.
Her dominant idea was that she would give anything
not to have a baby. She rationalised her repugnance
by reasons which, though plausible, were inadequate
to explain the intensity of her dislike to the prospect.
It was not necessary to dig deeply beneath these
reasons before discovering an irrational and quasi-
instinctive but intense disgust for motherhood.
Here is one of her dreams.
I. The face of a drowned woman showing above the
water, in the twilight. Renée stretched out her hand
to pull the body out of the water, but the body dis-
appears.
The associations to the words ** drowned woman'*
have an unmistakable significance.
A swollen body, a fat woman; her breasts quake.
. . . This woman laughs; she is repulsive. Beside
her is a young girl, slender and fresh-looking. **IVe
always thought pregnancy disgusting. ' '
This drowned woman is Renée pregnant. She is
** drowned'* because she feels overwhelmed by the
claims of motherhood; she cannot meet them; she
says that it is beyond her power to do so, because
of her ailments, and because she is not well enough
off. But the fundamental thing is her disgust; and
when we ask for associations with the ** pulling out
of the water,'' we once more get images tinged with
disgust.
286 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
To pull by the hair. — ^Lice. Itching. A dirty comb
which combs out lice.^
Some writers, and Adler in especial/ have pointed
ont that such a refusal of childbearing may be part
of a general refusal of femininity and a *' masculine
protest/' a subconscious wish to play a man's part.
Eenée certainly seems to exemplify this theory, and
her repudiation of the coming child would appear
to be a particular instance of her general refusal
of the woman's part, or of her maladaptation to it.
Here is another dream.
II. Coming away from a party. A leopard lurking
in a dark corner. An evening party. Renée was
there with all her family; her relatives and her hus-
band. She shows the leopard to her mother and her
sister. All three run away into the depths of a wood.
As soon as she is safe, she notices that her husband, her
brother-in-law, and her father, are not there. She
wonders what has happened.
The associations are frankly erotic.
Party. Lots of people. — Men in evening dress. —
Women in low dress. — Lascivious glances. The scene
reminds her of a nook in the wood, where a very smart
party had been held. . . . Reminiscence of a walk
with her husband, during the early days of their mar-
riage.
Dark corner. Lovers.
* Possibly this is an allusion to masturbation.
2 Op. cit., p. 155.
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 287
Leopard. Cries of alarm mingled with laughter.
The depths of a wood. The same walk with her hus-
band.
The significant point, however, is that in this erotic
setting, which recalls the walk with her husband,
Renée dreams that she runs away with two women,
her mother and her sister, whereas her husband,
and the husbands of both the other women, vanish.
Here we have a perfect example of a ** homosexual
fantasy." We discern a flight from sexuality prop-
erly so called, and a fixation of the feeling upon the
persons of the mother and the sister.
The next dream introduces the question of the
pregnancy, but it is linked to the foregoing dream.
III. Renée entered a suburban train with her mother
and her sister. Her mother had to get into a different
compartment, some way off. Before the train started,
the mother had lingered with Renée and her sister, and
high words had passed between her mother and her
sister. The doors were being shut. The mother was
standing on the platform when the train started.
Renée was afraid her mother would not be able to get
in; she was angry with her sister, whom she accused
of risking their mother's life. She tried to open the
window in order to look out, and the door opened. In
her hand she was holding a dress which had to be
mended. The dress fell on the platform. In order
to pick it up. Renée jumped out of the train while it
was in motion; then she ran after the train. She
saw her mother had got into the compartment all right.
288 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
When she stooped to pick up the dress, it had become a
compartment door and was very heavy. She picked it
up and had to run carrying it. She managed to throw
it into the compartment. Her sister was no longer
there. Instead there was a young couple, quarrelling.
She thought that the man was wrong and the woman
right.
The ^* suburban train" reminds Eenée of return-
ing home with her husband in such a train. In dream
in, as in dream II, we notice that the mother and
the sister have been substituted for the husband, and
we draw the same inference.
We can pass lightly over the points which the
dream and the associations appear to suggest, but
which would have to be confirmed by a more elabo-
rate analysis. Apparently the mother who lingers
with her daughters represents the fixation of the
infantile sentiment upon the mother; then there is
a vacillation between the mother and the sister;
finally the sister disappears to give place to a ^'cou-
ple" whose relations are not perfectly harmonious.
Let us confine ourselves to inferences which are more
adequately verified, and more pertinent to the ques-
tion with which we are now concerned.
As in all the subjects who refuse their appropriate
sexual role, or who are ill-adapted to perform it, the
associations emphasise the repugnant aspect of sexu-
ality. In the next compartment to that in which she
sees herself with her husband, there are some young
fellows singing lewd songs. The door which is be-
ing shut has the following associations :
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 289
The porter. A reminiscence. Renée was quite
young. A young man caught hold of her leg on the
platform; a porter interfered and everything was all
right.
This porter who keeps order and who ** shuts the
door'' might be regarded as an interesting symbol
of the ^* censorship'' or repression after a sexual
shock. Let this pass. We will follow the train of
images.
The ^* dress" recalls to Renée an old dress, a blue
costume. ^^It suited me very well; I was wearing
it the first time I met my husband. ' ' Then the dress,
fallen on to the platform, calls up a ** puddle of
dirty water; splashes of mud; soiled shoes." The
word **door" has the following associations.
Cushions, greasy from people 's heads. She does not
like to rest her own head there. She kisses her hus-
band, and their heads roll on the greasy places.
This brings us back to the dirty hair and the lice
in the associations to dream I. TTie association to
the symbol **very heavy door" is: **I have a pain
in my stomach." The weight she has to carry is
always the burden of pregnancy. Next come asso-
ciations in which Renée imagines herself stumbling
under the weight. She falls and is crushed — just
as in the earlier dream she was drowned.
Thus the interest of this dream is the way in which
it links up three elements: the fixation of feeling
upon the mother and the sister ; disgust inspired by
sexuality; refusal of maternity.
290 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
The homosexual trend is latent and purely psychic;
it has never given rise to actual perversion. (Nev-
ertheless, the subject declares that homosexual rela-
tionships do not seem repulsive to her.) This trend,
even though it remains psychical, doubtless under-
lies the frigidity in heterosexual intercourse. The
family history, the possibility of morbid inheritance
from the father, and the fact that her sister's case
resembles her own, might lead us to suppose that
there is organic predisposition; but psychoanalysis
has taught us to guard against over-ready assertions
of this kind. In any case we must not overlook the
psychological determinants. The subject reveals
one of these in the following reminiscence :
IV. Her father had been cold to her from child-
hood onwards. He was unkind to her mother. All
the same, when she was a young girl she had felt her
senses stirred when she was close to him. She had
been greatly disgusted by this; ''but I could not help
thinking that he was a man.'*
This may indicate that originally there was a
fixation of sexual feeling upon the father, followed
by a forcible repression, leading to the sense of dis-
gust; ultimately this may have given rise to the re-
fusal of sexuality and of the woman's part.
This last trend is likewise shown in typical remi-
niscences of childhood.
V (about 6 years old). An accident. Some little
girls sliding down a banister. Eenée wants to do the
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 291
same. At the turn of the stair she is going too fast
and loses her balance. Her hands are grasping the
banister, Tier head is over the well of the staircase, and
her legs are hanging over the stair.
Here we have a boy's game imitated by girls.
This constantly happens at the age which, in Freu-
dian terminology, is termied the age of ** infantile
homosexuality." But, having reached the **tum in
the stair,'' where it is necessary **to get a new bal-
ance," Eenée *4s going too fast," and undergoes
arrest at the stage of * infantile homosexuality."
As in the association to IV, we pass immediately to
symbols of repugnance. Renée recalls that, in one
of the weird notions of childhood, she had spat upon
the banister so that one of the others might get her
hands messed; falling into her own trap, she had
messed her own hands. (There may be an allusion
to masturbation here.) This spit recalls her father,
grown old, and coughing; and it is attended with
the idea of disgust mentioned in connection with IV.
But to the first word of this reminiscence V, the
word ** accident," we have the following associa-
tions :
Tramcar. ... A vehicle in motion. A fat woman
who gets out while the car is moving, and falls down.
We are back at the theme of dream I. This remi-
niscence, then, confirms the relationships which we
have deduced earlier in the analysis. It sketches a
psychological profile.
292 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
4, Martha
Longing fob Motherhood. Menstrual
Irregtilarity.
I give a fragment from an analysis. Martha, who
has some sons, shows evidence at this moment that
she wants to have a daughter or regrets not having
had one.
.... She finds herself in a strange house, although
the garden is the garden of their own home. . . . Out
of the basement window there issues a little naked girl
whom she takes in her arms. Shortly before, she was
offered some opera-glasses. She refused them.
The ** basement window '^ is rich in associations.
It is a '* partially blocked window'' — **The sort of
thing I don 't like. ' ' — She likes * * big windows. ' ' She
has no use for anything that wants to hide. She
likes a natural and wholesome love, not one which
is *'hygienised and mechanised."
The opera-glasses she has refused belong to the
same order of ideas. They symbolise the ^*hygien-
ised" and the ''mechanised." Martha does not like
using opera-glasses even at the theatre. She likes
what is natural. ''I prefer to use my own eyes."
Her conjugal relations are such that she cannot
expect a fresh pregnancy except from an illicit union.
It would have to be ''hidden"; her frank nature pro-
tests against having to put up with a "basement"
window instead of a "big" window. But she wants
a daughter none the less, and in the dream her wish
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION 293
secures fulfilment. The little naked girl issues from
the basement window.
Martha had not seen this meaning in her dream,
but the analysis was quite satisfactory to her. The
feelings which the analysis discovered in the dream
really were her conscious feelings.
In the same sitting, the first of her analysis, she
had spoken of irregular menstruation. The anal-
ysis led me to think that this trouble was only a
substitute for the desired pregnancy. I put the idea
before her, and the same month the trouble disap-
peared. (Autosuggestion had been simultaneously
practised.)
CHAPTER NINE
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS
One of the convictions to which psychoanalysis has
led ns is that the subconscious complexes which un-
derlie neuroses, and the subconscious complexes
which explain normal character traits, are essen-
tially identical. Superadded to what occurs in nor-
mal cases, the appearance of a neurosis presupposes
certain special conditions, such as that the complex
jshould be more intense than usual. Above all, we
must probably assume that accidental causes are
generally superadded, such as a psychic predisposi-
tion, a moral rebuff, overwork, etc. Before the rise
of psychoanalysis, causes of the latter category were
regarded as the essential causes of neuroses. Cer-
tainly, we must not neglect their study, but we gain
a profounder grasp of etiology by analysing the
subconscious complexes. The fact that these com-
plexes also exist in persons whose health is normal,
is apt to make people doubt whether psychoanalysis
really discloses the specific cause of neuroses. A
simple comparison will show that this objection is
invalid. Before the discovery of the tubercle bacil-
lus, pulmonary tuberculosis, or, as it was then
termed, ** consumption, " could be supposed to arise
as an outcome of overwork, a disappointment in
love, etc. Similarly with neurasthenia. In the case
of tuberculosis, we now regard such causes as acci-
294
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 295
dental causes, which have an effect only through
diminishing the resistance of the organism ; the spe-
cific cause is the tubercle bacillus. The tubercle
bacillus, like the subconscious complex, exists in
healthy human beings, but the healthy organism is
resistant. In this sense it has been said that we
are all more or less tuberculous. In precisely the
same sense it may be said that we are all potential
neuropaths.
This is why the analysis of the neuropath's per-
sistently infantile attitude towards the parents is
of primary importance. We have seen that differ-
ent forms of this attitude correspond .to different
types of character ; they also correspond to different
types of nervous disorder. We might even say that
the nervous disorders from which any patient suf-
fers are caricatures of that patient's psychological
type.
Alexander and Roger both exhibit the complex of
attachment to the mother, with its usual accompani-
ments, the dread of reality and the refusal of sexu-
ality. In Roger, this refusal actually leads to a
physiological condition of impotence. In Alexan-
der, the antagonism to the father is complicated by
latent homosexuality, by a voluptuous delight in suf-
fering inflicted by the father, and this feeling under-
lies anxiety states which take the form of vertigo.
Germaine, on the other hand, is greatly attached to
her father, and is definitely hostile to her mother
and her sister. Her morbidly fussy activity de-
pends upon a subconscious wish to outdo her sister.
The spasm of the eyelid from which she suffers is
296 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
over-determined, for underlying it are a desire for
marriage and a wish to escape from maternal
authority.
Of course we have encountered and shall encoun-
ter nervous disorders in many other subjects. But
the cases grouped in this chapter seem to me typi-
cal. Moreover, they are free, or almost free, from
complication with certain other elements (mental
troubles, the progressive course of a sublimation,
the eager search for a guide) which will practically
monopolise our attention in subsequent chapters.
1. Alexander
Anxiety States
The subject is a schoolmaster, who is also a stu-
dent of psychology. Although he has not fully
grasped the theories of psychoanalysis, he knows
something about them. I mention this point because
it may have influenced the course of the analysis,
and may, through suggestion, have made it conform
more closely to the classical type. On the other
hand the subject's mental calibre, his habit of self-
examination, were conditions favourable to precise
observation.
Alexander is thirty-nine years of age. The first
detail he gives me is that the death of his mother,
which took place when he was nine or ten years old,
exercised a great influence over his development.
(He is familiar with the theory of the ^^CEdipus
complex.") He was very fond of his mother, and
he was her favourite. He was the second child.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 297
He did not care much for his eldest brother, who
was rather jealous of him. His feeling towards his
father was tinged with a certain antipathy, for the
father was ** rather tyrannical/' though he made
sacrifices for his sons. Alexander, when quite a
little boy, used sometimes to have the grotesque idea
of hitting his father or his uncle. The father
wanted to become mayor of the village, and his polit-
ical interests often took him away to town; the
mother was very jealous during her husband's ab-
sences. The father has married again.
Relations between the father and the paternal
grandfather were broken off from the time of the
father's remarriage. Alexander, of whom the
grandfather was fond, was the only tie. He had a
dislike for his uncle, his father's half-brother,
younger than the father. He said to me : ^*I smoke
because my uncle doesn't like me to smoke. . . .
Whenever he has tried to help me, things have gone
amiss. . . . You don't mind my smoking!"
One of the central ideas of his life is that he must
not allow any woman to interfere with him in the
pursuit of his end. Though he has had opportuni-
ties, he has, generally speaking, been careful to avoid
falling in love. The adoptive mother of one of his
pupils has shown an affection for him to which he
has made no response. He had an exalted passion
for a young woman, who had been a playmate in
childhood, and whose education was entrusted to
him. When he had to come to Switzerland in order
to finish his studies, he began a declaration. The
young woman said: **The matter is not in my
298 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
hands, but in my father's." Wounded by this re-
ception of his advances, he broke with her and set
out for Switzerland.
After a failure in his career, he suffered from a
sudden obsession. He was constantly turning over
in his mind the phrase: ^* Something is going to
happen to you." Contemplating his thought, he
would reply : * * This is absurd ; I am going off my
head." It was at this date that he looked up one
of his uncles, who was a doctor. Since then, when
he closes his eyes, he sees old women, misshapen and
making grimaces; or sometimes wild beasts, or hu-
man figures which change into beasts. In these
visions, the figures of women, especially old women,
predominate. He recalls one feminine torso in par-
ticular, an old woman with hollow eyes.
In the period immediately following the above-
mentioned failure, he was haunted by ideas of sui-
cide. After his rupture with the young woman
(about two months afterwards) a definite anxiety
neurosis began. He was then in Zurich, and a feel-
ing of anxiety or sadness took possession of him
every evening. He was taciturn, lost his appetite,
and was affected with hypnagogic hallucinations.
He was troubled by obsessive anxiety states, and
notably by a feeling of instability, of vertigo, when
he thought about the movement of the earth — this
occurring especially while attending natural-history
lectures. Alexander was treated by Dr. Frank [a
Zurich psychoanalyst], and his condition greatly im-
proved. At the time when he came to Geneva, the
acute anxiety states troubled him only by way of
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 299
occasional relapses lasting a few hours. The ob-
session concerning the movement of the earth per-
sisted; he was also still troubled by the grimacing
figures. When he came to consult me, he had al-
ready begun to practise autosuggestion unaided.
By this means he had for ten days or more succeeded
in ridding himself of these visions, but the other
symptoms persisted.
At our first sitting, the existence of the ^^Œdipus
complex'' became apparent. The subject is aware
that he has this complex — too keenly aware, per-
haps, for he is biased by the theory. But he knew
nothing about this theory at the date when the mani-
festations began, and there can be no doubt that he
is really affected with the Œdipus complex. Psycho-
analysts tell us that images of grimacing old women
(the witch, the ''dread mother") are familiar sym^p-
toms of this complex. Antagonism to the father is
another sign. This hostility is generalised or ex-
tended towards various persons who might exercise
an authority akin to the paternal (the elder brother,
the uncle). Alexander expects the analysis to bring
about in him a symbolical reconciliation with ''the
father." He notes that the first doctor whom he
went to consult after the neurosis developed was an
*' uncle." He seems already to have identified me
with one of these quasi-paternal figures, with the
father against whom he protests. His uncle had
blamed him for smoking, and that is why he smokes ;
and it is immediately after he has explained this to
me that he starts smoking in my presence. Inas-
much as I know that for him, since childhood,
300 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
** uncle ^' and ** doctor'' liave been intimately asso-
ciated, and that I myself therefore embody for him
something of both these attributes, I understand the
situation. As so often happens in these analyses,
his subconscious is led to me by the conscious, as a
haltered calf is led to the slaughterhouse — and the
subconscious is rebellious.
Here is the first dream of which he brought me
the record. He awoke twice in the course of the
dream, but it was resumed as soon as he went to
sleep again.
I. He was in his native region, perhaps in his native
village. Even while the dream was in progress, it was
not quite easy to be certain where he was. It seemed
to be the place where his. best friend and sometime
schoolmaster, Pierre, lived, though Pierre really lives
on a little island. He arrived towards evening, alone
or with one companion. He does not know why he
did not visit his friend immediately. There was a con-
flict in his mind, for he wanted to see Pierre. Next
day he learned that Pierre had just died. He was
remorseful. He could not go to see his friend's body,
for the relatives knew that he might have called the
day before. He went out, taking the first road that
offered, and found himself at the place where, on the
previous evening, he had had the mental conflict. He
was now accompanied by a girl, who may have be-
longed to the locality or may have beec a Swiss. The
place was a green field in springtime He does not re-
member what he said to the girl, but now he saw his
friend's wife coming towards him. She was oddly
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 301
dressed, not in mourning, but wearing a coffee-coloured
gown, with a fashionable hat and a crape veil. She
ran up to him and threw herself into his arms. Sexual
excitement. He had expected reproaches, and was
greatly astonished. She gave him some sketchy details
concerning Pierre's death. He went back with her
towards the house. (At the moment when she had ap-
proached him the young girl had disappeared.) He
entered with the wife. The house was unrecognisable.
Terrible disorder. In the dream they lived on the
ground floor, whereas really they lived on the first
floor. Seized with terror he awoke (this was the sec-
ond waking). Falling asleep again, he found himself
back in the house. His friend's body was headless,
and this had been the cause of his alarm. He cried
out. In a basket to the left was the severed head.
The eyes were closed. The face was pale, but not stiff.
Terror. Change of scene. Alexander found himself
in the laundry. Pierre 's wife was there, also her niece,
who is the same age as himself. He greeted her. His
terror was now forgotten. He had a feeling which he
thinks was sexually tinged. The wife was washing
clothes ; the water was dirty, looking almost like black
blood. The clothes grew dirtier while being washed.
Apropos of this dream, Alexander recalls that
seven years ago his friend's wife and her niece had
come to stay in the village. The wife had been
taken ill and took to her bed. He had been for a
walk with the niece to the place seen in the dream ;
it was in the spring. The niece had said that she
was not in love with anyone, that she did not ^^feel
like a woman.'' She seems to be the symbol of an
impracticable love, or of love refused. Pierre's
302 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
wife was the most intimate friend of Alexander's
mother. Pierre himself, the old friend, had in Alex-
ander's boyhood been his schoolmaster. Pierre's
wife and Pierre are respectively condensed with
Alexander's mother and father. The setting of the
scene is the outcome of a similar condensation. The
district is simultaneously Alexander 's native village
and the place where Pierre lives; the house is
Pierre's, but in the dream he lives on the ground
floor like Alexander's parents in reality.^ Pierre
and his wife may be regarded is impersonations of
Alexander's father and mother, and the whole dream
is a variation upon the Œdipus drama, love of the
mother and murder of the father. Notwithstanding
his knowledge of the Œdipus complex, Alexander
had not, prior to the analysis, realised that this was
the meaning of his dream. However, the murder is
not direct; it would even seem that the real culprit
must have been the mother, that she is a sort of
Clytemnestra. But the black blood at the close, the
spot which cannot be washed out, must certainly be
the blood of crime, like the blood of Agamemnon in
the ancient tragedy. By association, the black blood
and the dirty water arouse images linked with the
idea of the mother.
A remiaiscence of childhood. A confinement. Not-
withstanding the superstition which forbids it in this
^ The "coffee-coloured gown" reminds the subject of the excel-
lent coffee which he has been used to drink at his friend's house,
and of the way in which he felt more at home at Pierre's than
with his own people. — Pierre has written to Alexander that he
regards Alexander as "friend, son, and brother, rolled into one."
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 303
region, the blood-stained water had been allowed to
flow into the street. The woman who had just been
confined was the mother-in-law of Alexander's sister.
We are certainly reliving the Œdipns drama, but
in this case the mother is at fault. The son does
not make advances; she makes them, and he is as-
tonished by them. Nevertheless, when Alexander
was asked for associations to the words '^she threw
herself into his arms,'' he said: **The little child
runs to its mother's arnns." We seem to see re-
vealed here a complex which the subject condemns,
and from which he is now liberating himself.
Alexander, in the dream, was ** greatly aston-
ished" by the widow's advances. The associations
to this were:
Injustice. To protect the culprit one loves ; the at-
titude of the mother to the child. Reminiscences of
acts of injustice suffered through strictness (acts of
paternal injustice).
Asked for associations to the word ^* disorder,"
the subject recalls that his father was greatly put
out by disorder, by untidiness of any sort. In the
dream he takes vengeance for his father's strictures
and tantrums. The father was dead, and, though
there was ** terrible disorder," he could no longer
protest.
Here are the associations of the **head in the bas-
ket":
St. John the Baptist's head. The church of St.
John in his native village. Here there is a picture
304 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
showing St. John^s head in a charger. The church has
been rebuilt. Between the demolished church and the
new church there is a passage, and as a child Alex-
ander was terribly afraid of this place.
Apropos of ** terror," he adds that he used to be
very timid. He was greatly impressed by stories
of the *^ black man" (image of the father). Ques-
tioned about the * ^ rebuilt church, ' ' he went on :
The house in the dream may perhaps have been the
house where his mother was born. — The house where
Alexander himself was born has been rebuilt; the old
house and the new ; the two lives, that of the child and
that of the grown-up. — How he used to enjoy being at
church when he was a little boy. — Later he had a crisis
which destroyed his faith. But later still he became
religious once more, in a wider sense. — His mother had
had religious inclinations, but not his father (though
the father ultimately grew religious). When Alex-
ander was a child, his father had never gone to church.
The father was a man of action; it was while he had
been mayor of the village that the building of the new
church had been completed.
The subject has told us what these two churches
were, that they signified the life of the child and the
life of the grown-up. The former is linked to the
idea of the mother; the latter to the idea of the
father and of ''activity." Alexander has never
completely broken away from the life of childhood ;
the ''passage between the churches" alarms him;
lie has not really traversed it. In other subjects I
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 305
have encountered like symbols to his ** passage'' for
the expression of a similar crisis ; ^ the same remark
applies to the symbol of the old house and the new.
Apropos of the same images, Alexander recalls
his fear of the cemetery. Before his mother's death
he used to like seeing funeral processions and to be
shown dead people. But after she died, he could
no longer bear such things. In the evening, as soon
as the lamp had been lit, he found it impossible to
remain alone in the room. He was terror-stricken,
and was obsessed by his mother's image; subse-
quently this image was transformed into an image
of the witch, of the '^ dread mother."
The *' crape veil" over the widow's face reminded
him of his girl playmate ; he pictured her in mourn-
ing after her brother 's death, although he had never
seen her thus. At bottom, presumably, he fancies
her in mourning for himself, for he loved her like
a sister. The condensation of this girl with the
widow suggests a link between the love for his girl
playmate and his attachment to his mother. Such
a love, readily idealised, is fairly characteristic of a
young man affected with the ^^Œdipus complex."
This, doubtless, was the attitude of Dante towards
Beatrice ; and I have shown that it was probably the
attitude of Verhaeren.^
Alexander tells me that, except for his old play-
mate, the women with whom he has been in love
have always been older than himself ; once only has
^ See pp. 209-10, the case of Gerard and the symbol of the road
by the sea,
2 See my forthcoming study, Psychoanalysis and -esthetics.
306 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
he been on intimate terms with a woman of his own
age ; she was a mother. The unconscions search for
a woman whose type will harmonise with that of the
maternal *^ imago'' is obvious here.
Love for woman qua woman has been repressed.
The person who accompanies Alexander in the
dream is first of all a mere wraith about which he
is not sure; later it seems to be Pierre's niece, a
girl who says she cannot love anyone and that she
'^does not feel like a woman." This wraith dis-
appears as soon as the widow comes upon the stage.
The image of the mother has put that of the other
woman to flight.
The rupture with the girl playmate is, as usual
in such cases, ostensibly brought about by reasons
that are quite inadequate. The true but hidden
reason is that the beloved would cease to be the
sister (she is *4n mourning for her brother"), and
that the ideal love would pass into the realm of
realities.
It is necessary to point out how, once more, sexual
reality is linked with '* reality" in general, with out-
ward activity. (The father is a ^*man of action.")
A significant fact is that the nervous disorders be-
gin to affect Alexander after a check in his career,
and that they become fully developed as a sequel
to a sentimental check (the rupture with his old
playmate). The two checks are one. They express
the same failure of adaptation to ** reality."
Alexander reported three dreams occurring in one
night. In the first dream he had visions of old
women chiding and grimacing; of heavy shoes, the
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 307
laces of whicli were iron chains. The subject still
felt himself to be a prisoner.
In the second dream Alexander saw one of his
little brothers, son of the step-mother. They had
to go down a mountain road; night was falling.
Alexander said to himself, in the dream :
II. ''If I were alone, I could go down all right; but
I have to look after my brother.''
Seized with fear, he awoke. Apropos of the last
phrase, he thought :
''If I were alone, if my father had not married
again, I should have no difficulty in carrying on my
studies; I should have more money.''
He thinks also that he was "inclined to be tyran-
nical" towards his younger brother, whose education
he had taken in hand. This implies that he had
assumed towards the little brother his father's atti-
tude towards himself. His aim in adopting an
educational career was to become an educational
reformer in his own part of the world; this would
have been a way of getting even with his father,
and of making a protest against the education he
had received.
Apropos of this dream he also recalls a reminis-
cence of childhood.
III. His father strikes him, lifts him, and throws
him down. Later, in the visions of his neurosis, he
sometimes found himself looking at a fine view, and
fell from a height.
308 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
This is associated in the dream with a feeling of
fear, and with the vertigo experienced in high
places. No doubt we are on the track of the cause
of his obsession about the movement of the earth.
A little later, in fact, Alexander went on to tell
me that in childhood his conception of God was based
upon the image of his own father. He had no idea
of God as love, but only of God as a tyrant, as Jeho-
vah. He added that for him the ^*fear that the
earth will fall'' was vaguely associated with the re-
ligious sentiment. In childhood he considered that
**God must have done terrible things, for God is
terrible." At this period he was affected with a
metaphysical curiosity which found satisfaction in
myths :
Eain is God going for a drive in his cloud chariot.
God has a watering-pot which he fills at a cistern.
When he empties the watering-pot, it rains.
The sense of vertigo induced by the thought that
the earth will faU would seem to be the outcome of a
similar mythical transposition. God is the dread
father. He has lifted the world as Alexander's
father lifted the little boy. And God has thrown
the world into the void.
As to his disquietudes concerning the little brother
(Alexander's inclination to tyrannise over him; the
feeling that the little brother is a nuisance, a re-
striction of his own powers) they are real enough.
But the dream masks something more. When he is
asked for associations, ** little brother" calls up
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 309
** little demon''; and the word ''demon" is further
associated with ''sexual organ.'' This little demon
is a sinister and satanic power. We glimpse here
once more the condensation which psychoanalysts
have so often detected, that of the "sexual organ"
with the "little brother" or the "child." The re-
pressive attitude towards the little brother repre-
sents a repression of sexuality. The idea of the
"demon" which is a nuisance and which involves a
restriction of power leads us to the subject's un-
easiness concerning masturbation. But on this
point we shall learn more from the third of the three
consecutive dreams.
IV. A deal table. The Kaiser is seated at the table,
and with him is General N., who in the dream is chief
of the general staff. . . . The Kaiser smiles triumph-
antly, saying: "The game is in my hands now. Bul-
garia, Grreece, and Turkey are on my side." But then
he begins to weep. Alexander is pleased to see the
Kaiser weep, but he says to himself: "Are the Ger-
mans still at their spying?"
"Table" suggests a "counter in a bank" — and
the money troubles which passed through his mind
a moment ago in connection with the "little
brother." The "Kaiser" represents the "tyranni-
cal father." Apropos, Alexander recalls that when
he was thirteen or fourteen years old he was at a
meal when his father was present. All at once he
left the table without apparent reason, and, barely
conscious of what he was doing, practised masturba-
tion. He has a vague sense that this ridiculous
310 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
action was in some obscure way a protest against
the father. To the words *'the game is in my
hands'' [in the French, **je les tiens''] came the
association ''I hold it" [je le tiens]; the **penis*';
^* masturbation."
*^ Spying by the Germans" is the paternal espion-
age. Furthermore, '* espionage" calls up the sound
**sp," and the two letters ^'s" and *^p"; the former
suggests the * 'female organ," the latter suggests
the **male organ." The two letters also suggest
'Hwo demons."
Among these various associations, those at least
concerning the ** little brother" and the ** demons"
do not appear to have been suggested by theories
previously known to the subject. Alexander did not
recall having heard anything anent Freud's observa-
tions on this particular point.
Apropos of ** general staff" came the following
associations :
Something absurd. General Ludendorf ; his name;
ludere is the Latin for *'to play"; Dorf is the German
for ' * village ' ' ; native village. A militarist state. * * I
am a pacifist; I have a contempt for officers." A dis-
tressing thought that everywhere army officers are
more highly esteemed than savants.
Here, as elsewhere, the repression of the combat-
ive instinct is linked with sexual repressions and
with protest against the father. The Kaiser, the
*' officer," is the father; the *' savant" is Alexander
himself.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 311
This analysis, which has stirred the depths,
caused, as sometimes happens in such cases, tem-
porary excitement. ** Visions'' recurred; ** de-
mons" and animals. In these visions, male figures
were more frequently seen than of yore; they en-
croached upon the images of the '* dread mother."
We shall see in a moment that this presaged the
transition to homosexual fantasies. A kind of
doubling of the consciousness now became manifest ;
while part of the consciousness was a prey to the
images, the other part was a tranquil observer.
This was a new feature, and it reassured the sub-
ject. Besides, the crisis only lasted for about
twenty-four hours. On subsequent evenings, an
autosuggestion sufficed to restore mental calm.
With the following dream, we definitely reach a
new phase of the analysis. The maternal complex
is no longer in the foreground, for its place has been
taken by homosexual fantasies.
V. As in most of the dreams previously recorded,
Alexander does not know exactly where he is. Travel-
ling, presumably. An accident. The engine is com-
ing. A young man wishes to cross the rails. He has
not the time. Alexander is frightened. He watches
the young man, who only just misses being crushed.
He sees him from behind, with two oval holes in the
seat of his trousers. He says to himself: **I wonder
if he has money enough to buy another pair of
trousers?"
* '■ Accident ' ' suggests * * moral rebuff. " * * Engine ' '
gives the following associations:
312 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Terrible. When Alexander was a little boy, he was
always afraid of railway engines. Especially of the
headlights glowing like two eyes. It was ''God look-
ing at me.'' He wanted to go to confession to the
engine.
In further conversation, the holes in the seat of
the trousers are associated with ''homosexuality*';
and once more with the ''two eyes of the railway
engine. '* It is just as in dream IV, the supervision
exercised by the "tyrannical father," "German
espionage." It is also the "dread God." In addi-
tion, it is a homosexual fantasy, a continuation of
the masturbation reminiscence which was one of the
associations to dream IV.
In his objective life, the subject has never been
homosexual. He merely has the virtual tendency
towards homosexuality which is usual in connection
with the Œdipus complex and the repression of
sexuality. The tendency displays itself as blame-
worthy, as "censored." The concluding associa-
tions show this.
The seat of his trousers. Something injurious to
society.
To buy another pair of trousers. Falsehood. The
injustice of society. Society uses money to hide its
ugliness.
Hole. Little windows through which one can look
at ugliness.
Once only we get back to the maternal complex,
in the following association :
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 313
Crushed. The sound ''cr , . ." Tearing. The
hole out of which a child comes.
The word ** rails*' suggests ^HMngs running."
The words '^he has not the time'' call up the arrest
which the subject feels to have taken place in his
own development (owing to his attachment to the
mother, and to infantile feelings), and the need that
he should accelerate this development. He feels
that the analysis is itself the necessary acceleration
of development.
At the close of the analysis of this dream, he re-
calls another dream, quite short and definitely homo-
sexual.
VI. A man (apparently rather old). Viewed from
behind, naked, leaning well forward. The upper part
of the body cannot be seen. But the genital organs are
visible (they recall the two oval holes in the seat of
the trousers of the man seen in dream V).
Apropos, the subject feels impelled to say that
in sexual relationship he is not averse to being
** underneath." He goes on to speak of the religious
sentiment. As a child he had been fond of pictur-
ing the joy and suffering of a martyr. He had been
told that at Easter the Jews killed children and
drank their blood. He took a particular pleasure
in imagining himself to be a child thus treated; or
in imagining himself as in the position of Regulus,
rolled in a cask studded inside with nails. — All this
reveals homosexuality tinged with masochism.
314 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Furthermore, the latent homosexual trend must
have undergone subconscious fixation upon the
father. This would explain the man in dream VI
** apparently rather old/^ In dream V it would
explain the association of the two indecent ovals
with the eyes of the railway engine, which are the
father's eyes. In this way we probe to its recesses
the nature of the infantile attitude towards the
tyrannical father, and consequently towards the
dread God. Here we have something more than a
counterpart to the attachment to the mother. We
have also a homosexual — masochist disposition, a
voluptuous delight in suffering inflicted hy the
father, a feeling which tends to undergo sublimation
into a voluptuous delight in suffering inflicted hy
God, The vertigo connected with the idea of the
earth's movement (to which the subject refers once
more at this stage) is the symbol of the same volup-
tuousness, and it has a kinship with his childhood
fantasy of being rolled in the barrel of Eegulus.
We reach the third and last stage of the analysis,
the transition from homosexual fantasies to fan-
tasies of normal sexuality, and therewith, the transi-
tion to extroversion. The subject thus passes
through the three stages of evolution described by
Freud. (Alexander does not recall having ever
heard about this theory.)
The subject's resistance was peculiarly strong
at the time of this decisive transition. Alexander
did not keep his appointment foifthe sitting at which
the dream next to be recorded ought to have been
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 315
analysed. *'By a slip of memory'' he had made
another appointment for the hour at which this an-
alysis was to have taken place; and he was aware
that the * ^ slip of memory ' ' was a mask for a secret
wish. The dream was analysed several days after
I had written up the notes on it. By that time,
some of the important details had vanished from the
subject's conscious memory. *^Were it not that I
trust you implicitly I should have believed that you
had invented them." Finally, while giving asso-
ciations to the close of the dream, Alexander had the
impression that he was ^ Splaying," that he was be-
ing shifty, that he was hiding something. I there-
fore decided to go on to the ^^ second degree," that
is, to ask for fresh associations, taking as pointers
the inferences from the first associations. We were
compensated for our trouble by the results of this
painstaking analysis. Here is the dream:
VII. Alexander was with one of his brothers in a
large room. In front of him, there was a circle on the
floor. It was an animal, a little snake curled up ; its
scales were of a shiny black. Alexander looked at it
with interest,* but when he noticed the scales, he was
frightened. He crushed it. Immediately there ap-
peared another snake, like the first, but twice as large.
Alexander was afraid. He said to his brother: *'Kill
it ; I can 't stand it. " The brother did so. [But now
there appeared a third snake, a great deal larger than
the second. His brother cut the snake into three
pieces. Alexander was surprised to see how easy this
was. The head geared itself and looked at him, al-
though it was dead. It was like a dog's head.]
316 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
(While telling me about the three pieces, Alexan-
der made a sketch of them, in order to explain their
relative positions. We were both astonished to find
that, involuntarily, he had drawn an excellent like-
ness of a child's head.)
Additional snakes now appeared. The last one was
positively colossal. His brother killed them all, one
after another. But, when confronted by the last of the
snakes, Alexander was alone. He was in the street.
He said to himself: *'Is it worth while killing this
one?" Then the snake fell to pieces. All the scales
became absurd little cooking-pots. The dreamer
awoke, laughing.
(It was the section between brackets which had
been forgotten when we came to make the analysis.
From the asterisk onwards, the subject had the im-
pression that he was * Splaying** when giving the
associations.)
The *' brother '^ in this dream is the eldest brother,
inclined to be jealous and to ^^ tyrannise'' over
Alexander (a substitute for the father). *^ Circle"
suggests *^the earth turning," and this brings us
back to ** vertigo"; the ** snake" (a symbol which is
familiar to all psychoanalysts) suggests *Mevil"
and brings us back to the ^* demons." The series
of associations to *^ scales" is peculiar.
Harsh; his eldest brother. The sound *'k." Cain.
Alexander thinks that his brother was Cain and that
he himself was Abel.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 317
All this opening section of the dream is perfectly
clear; we are still in the realm of homosexual fan-
tasies tinged with masochism. But now there be-
gins a different series, a strange one, which rounds
off the whole. The word ^* crushes'' (which, by the
way, reminds us of the railway engine in V) calls
up:
Music. A fragment from ''The Danaides.'* The
conclusion terrified Alexander. It was ''crushing."
He had a feeling of vengeance and justice. The
music gave him a vision of the dread Jehovah.
This brings us back again to the eyes of the rail-
way engine, and, by way of the bottomless vessel of
the Danaides, to the barrel of Regulus, and to the
vertigo aroused by the sense of a bottomless abyss.
But it is from this point that Alexander begins to
think that he is playing, that he is becoming shifty.
And it is precisely from this point that the dream
begins to teach us something new. We end by secur-
ing three very definite results.
The *Hhree pieces'' of the snake, first call up
'* trinity," and then ^*the three parts of the penis."
The child's head, drawn by the subconscious, first
suggests **my little brother,' and then **my desire
to become a father." In addition, the child's head
recalls a picture which was in the old village church,
a picture of St. George killing the dragon. But at
this point the subject remembers that the dragon in
the picture had a dog's head, the head which the
snake in his dream had reared, and which he had
up till now forgotten.
318 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
The dead head suggests ^'vengeance'* and ** ven-
geance upon the father.'' (Compare this with the
severed head in dream I.) "Vengeance," in its
turn, calls up "corpse,'' and the dead body of a
neighbour whose- son had taught Alexander to mas-
turbate. (Here we have the motif of IV.) There
is superadded the reminiscence of an exhibitionist
incident during adolescence. These memories are
distressing, being tinged with remorse.
But the subject has the definite impression of
having won a victory, of having made a great step
forward. St. George has slain the dragon.^ The
instinct, which had been inclined to enter devious
paths, has been led into the straight road; it is
wholesome, but it is not the crude instinct, it is sub-
limated; the "demon" has given place to the
"child." Sexuality justifies itself, moralises itself,
in its aspirations towards a family. Furthermore,
Alexander thinks it possible that he has sublimated
his desire for "vengeance upon his father" by
transforming it into a "wish to become a father,"
this being, in fact, an innocenlî way of "takmg the
father's place.'*
From this moment, not only did the symptoms
disappear, but an inward harmony was established;
the best elements of Alexander's mind had been
awakened; his aspirations were lofty, genial and
wholesome. The subject now wanted to marry.
Since the last steps forward had been made in the
^ Cf. in my study Psychoanalysis and esthetics, the analysis
of Verhaeren's poem "Saint Georges," an analogous symbol.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 319
analysis he had fallen in love with a young French-
woman, and he said: **This is the first time that
I have really been in love." Here is one of the
dreams of this final stage :
VIII. Alexander was in a small room. Suddenly
there came a noise, and a burglar appeared, threaten-
ing him. Alexander remained calm, and said: ''My
good fellow, what do you want? There's my coat
on the chair; take my pocketbook; I have only fifty
francs; you can have them." — But now it seemed to
him that the burglar was asleep and then awoke from
a nightmare, saying: ''I've been frightened." Alex-
ander asked why. The burglar answered: ''Didn't
yoiï see those two people ? ' ' Then, behind the burglar,
he saw a man clothed in iron, who at first seemed to
be dead, but then moved. Alexander said : ' ' You need
not be afraid of this man." The other figure was
merely a black shade which disappeared; he had the
feeling that it was his mother.
The associations showed that the burglar was my-
self. The burglar who has broken into Alexander 's
mind, has now been accepted, and the victim greets
him cordially. The '*coat on the chair" gave the
following association: **I have cast off the old
Adam." The old Adam has been indued by the
analyst, and perhaps this is why, in the latter part
of the dream, the subject has changed rôles with
the burglar. The ' ' fifty francs ' ' calls up * ' French. ' '
The young woman he is in love with is French. I
am also of French nationality, and the subject had
actually sent me fifty francs shortly before by way
320 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
of fee. In the original image of these *^ fifty French
francs," the acceptance of the analyst has been con-
densed with the acceptance of normal love and mar-
riage. The shadow which vanishes is the symbolical
*^ mother,'' is the Œdipns complex and introversion;
the dead man who revives is the * ^father," is re-
pressed virility and extroversion.
Henceforward the dreams express confidence,
Alexander's conviction that he will ^^do good work,"
and his feeling that the analysis is finished. Espe-
cially notable is it that in one of these dreams
Alexander had gone to see his uncle the doctor, who
is condensed with myself. In the course of the as-
sociations to this dream, came the following:
My uncle said: *'Yau have come to consult me, not
to see me." I answered: ''I don't need to consult
you any more."
The play was really over. A marriage would
have been an appropriate ending, but this was not
to be. The young Frenchwoman was engaged to
somebody else, and Alexander had to give up all
thoughts of her. He passed through a distressing
crisis, and was afraid for a time that his symptoms
would return. But his fears were groundless, and
he triumphed in this final struggle without having
felt that the earth was spinning too quickly beneath
his feet.
The analysis had lasted three months, and, by the
end of it, burglar and burgled had become good
friends.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 321
2. Roger
PSYCHASTHENIA. IMPOTENCE.
Eoger is an intellectual, thirty years of age. A
typical introvert, he has cultivated the faculty of
introspection, and this will frequently help us in
the course of our analysis.
He was ten years old when his father died. His
mother was of a very nervous temperament, and she
brought him up rather strictly. There was strong
fixation upon the mother. Since childhood this fix-
ation has been attended by a distaste for the virile
aspects of life, a dislike for outdoor recreations, and
even for all games except those of an imaginative
character. Roger is extremely timid. In addition,
he is inclined to be idle; he lacks power of concen-
tration, is fond of reverie, and is averse to reality
and to mathematics. Roger thinks that this morbid
condition has existed since early childhood, but that
his mother's treatment of him made it much worse.
He is aware that he has an individualist tendency,
which has also been marked since early years, ac-
companied by a strong dislike for any form of ^ * dis-
cipline"—first that of an athletic club, and then
that of military service. He has the same dislike
for religious ceremonies and dogmas, and displays a
tendency towards mysticism and introspective an-
alysis. There has been and still is a conflict in his
mind between '* pantheism" and **personalism" in
religion, a distressing conflict, from which he would
fain be freed. (No doubt the explanation of this
322 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
pulling hither and thither is that Eoger is attracted
to pantheism by his individualist hostility to dogma,
but that a pantheist god is less congenial to his in-
dividualism than a personal god would be.) The
subject displays a maladaptation to social life, espe-
cially manifest m the difficulty he has found in choos-
ing a profession. Eoger has artistic ambitions ; his
studies were interrupted by the war; he has little
inclination to resume them, and does not really know
what to work at.
Moreover, he finds mental work difficult, for he is
neurasthenic, and his condition has been aggravated
by the war and by internment in a German concen-
tration camp (he is a Frenchman). He fancies that
his ailments are connected with the troubles of his
sexual life.
The nature of sexuality was explained to him
when he was about twelve years old by two school-
fellows. Immediately, sexual desire became appar-
ent; it was ^* powerful, and indeed almost morbid
in its intensity.'' Since then he has masturbated
daily, and has also had homosexual relationships.
In masturbation, and in all perverse acts, he * Splays
the woman's part." When he was nineteen he had
his first experience of heterosexual relations, but
lacked potency. The impotence persisted in subse-
quent attempts, and the sexual act could only be
completed after masturbation. Following the in-
judicious advice of a medical man, he became in-
fected with gonorrhoea.
On two occasions he has bad love passions of an
exalted character. The first was when he was fif-
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 323
teen, and fell in love with a girl of twelve ; but sex-
ual desire became the predominant element in his
feeling, and *^ desire killed love.^* The other pas-
sion, which was of an extremely respectful charac-
ter, originated during his internment, when he fell
in love with a German woman of high attainments
and great moral worth, whose qualities harmonised
with those of the maternal imago. He deliberately
suppressed sexual desire. Generally speaking,
in Roger, love and sexual desire are dissociated.
Love, to him, seems exalted; whereas sexual desire
seems coarse and perverted.
The consciousness of impotence, he says, increases
his timidity in relation to girls. For a long time
the feeling that he is abnormal in this respect made
him very unhappy, and would still make him very
unhappy were it not that the feeling of physical
weakness, and the distress on account of the neuras-
thenia which makes all attempts to work fruitless,
are now predominant. He is sure that sexual im-
potence and general psychasthenic impotence **are
of the same nature. ' '
Roger related to me some? reminiscences of child-
hood, full of experience and of meaning. First of
all came a fine symbol of attachment to the mother
and of introversion. Roger is always delighted
when he sees the ** outer world'' being obliterated.
I. A winter day. It is snowing. A bright ûre îa
burning. I am about four years old. A sense of
security, of enwrapping affection, of things surround-
324 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
ing me ; Mother enters singing. ... I run to the win-
dow to watch the snow falling, to see it covering every-
thing np, and to enjoy the mysterious way in which
the sounds from without are being muffled.
Among the symbols of introversion, there may
also be mentioned a reminiscence containing the
common fantasy of the loss of a precious object by
immersion (the motif of the Rhine gold).
II. Every morning they used to put me on the
chamber-pot; while sitting there I would count my
fortune, a dozen sous; one day I let all the coins fall
into the receptacle. The whole household was sum-
moned by my cries. All my fortune was in the pot.
They comforted me, and the cook undertook to clean
the coppers, so that they shone like gold.
To the same order of ideas belongs a third remi-
niscence. Like the second it contains an immersion
fantasy; while it recalls the first, in that the outer
world was disappearing and that the child's face
**was glued to the window." The floods were out:
III. The town was under water; our house stood
a little higher than the rest, and was not affected;
but the garden was flooded, and people were using
boats in the streets. I did not go to school during
these days, but spent the time with my face glued
to the window, almost as happy as our seagull with
the clipped wing, which was delighted with the flood.
The ** seagull with the clipped wing" would seem
to be a fantasy of impotence, both in the narrower
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 325
and in the wider senses of this term. This impotence
is closely linked with introversion. The child is
happy to escape from the outer world, from reality
and from school, just as later he will subconsciously
endeavour to escape from his studies, from profes-
sional work (while as far as consciousness is con-
cerned he continues to make futile efforts to devote
himself to them).
The submergence of the town certainly symbolises
a loss of the '* function of the real." We are not
surprised to find that, apropos of this reminiscence,
without transition, and without any logical tie,
Roger reports feelings of imreality,
IV. I should like also to mention a strange feeling
I often had when returning home at night after a walk,
or after a journey in which I had been lulled to sleep
by the movement of the train or of the carriage. To
my reason, the things and the places were the same as
they had always been ; but as far as feeling was con-
cerned they were different, they were strange to me.
I have long been subject to such feelings. . . .
This also happens when I perform certain actions.
I sometimes feel as if I had done precisely the same
thing before, and in the same circumstances, although
I know perfectly well I have done nothing of the
kind.
In childhood I have often asked myself: *'Why am
I myself? What is this me? Why should I be this
sort of creature, which seems quite uninteresting, and
yet apparently has a part to play in the world?"
Here we have a salient instance of the feeling
which Bergson has brilliantly analysed, the feeling
326 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
of '* false recognition/' the feeling that we have pre-
viously experienced something we are now experi-
encing for the first time, a feeling of the enfeeble-
ment of the function of the real/ The reader should
likewise note how the feeling of unreality succeeds
a sense of being ** lulled," of being as it were rocked
in a cradle, a feeling naturally associated with the
idea of the mother. We are moving in a circle com-
prised of introversion, detachment from the real,
fixation upon the mother. Once more, the remi-
niscence that follows seems a natural sequel.
V. "When my father and mother were quarrelling,
my father would sometimes raise his voice. My mother
wept, and that made me take her side.
Here is a reminiscence which seems very strange
at first sight.
VI. A banker who was a political opponent of my
father, committed suicide, as an outcome of a fraudu-
lent bankruptcy. Anything crooked in money matters
produced in me a sense of disgust a^d anxiety which
often lasted for a long time.
This feeling can only be explained by a condensa-
tion of ** crookedness" in money matters with other
** crooked" things of a more intimate character.
We are put on the track by the fact that the banker
in question was *'an opponent of my father," and
that this incident immediately follows Eoger's
avowal **I took my mother's side." We have
1 Bergson, L'énergie spirituelle.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 327
definitely entered the sphere of the Œdipus com-
plex. As invariably happens, this complex is asso-
ciated with the repression of sexuality. The analy-
sis apparently forces us to assimilate the '^fraudu-
lent bankruptcy'' with *' sexual perversion/' which
is a '* crooked" means of escape.^ We may recall
that the condensation of sexual affairs with mone-
tary affairs is quite common.
Here is an interesting reminiscence which illus-
trates Roger's feelings towards his father. It was
at the time of the father's death, and the child had
gone to stay with relatives.
VII. I felt well at ease, surrounded by sympathy;
I forgot my father, and I smiled. After the funeral
I returned home. I had got quite used to the idea
that I should not see my father again. There was a
family dinner at my aunt's. I asked: **Who are the
heirs?'*
The elder brother, in this case as in others,^ is a
substitute for the father; and, like the father, he
represents the virility and the reality which the sub-
ject renounces.
VIII. My brother (who had hitherto been away at
the commercial scJiool, and, subsequently, during mili-
tary service) had returned home. . . . He inspired me
with fear rather then with affection. He was a good
fellow, practical and objectively inclined, fond of
1 Cf. in Alexander's case, the masturbation which was practised
as an irrational protest against the father (p. 309).
2 Cf. the cases of Otto and Alexander.
328 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
sport, the sort of man wJio always falls on his feet;
but ... we had nothing in common.
I italicise the character traits of the brother,
which Roger mentioned spontaneously, for his
phrases give a pithy description of the extroversion
(^* objectively inclined'') which he shuns for him-
self. We know his dislike for ** military service"
and for social life. The ** commercial school,"
which is a preparation for the realistic side of life,
is equally repugnant to him. He was always a
dreamer, and he was not happy even at school. We
have learned this already from reminiscence III.
IX. At school I did little work and dreamed a great
deal. I did not understand mathematics at all, and
I was never able to do a sum in division. . . . When
I was asked to explain a passage too difficult for me,
I would burst into tears. . . . But I was fond of the
French lesson.
The school belonged to the outward and social life
which the introvert shuns. Here is a description of
Roger's feelings on Thursdays and Sundays.
X. The day was always utterly spoiled for me by
the prospect of meeting the boarders out walking.
This was a perfect torture to me, partly because of
an insuperable timidity, and partly because of other
feelings which I have never succeeded in analysing.
When our analysis had shown the connection of
these '* other feelings" with the fundamental com-
plex, with the refusal of virility and with the
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 329
'^fraudulent bankruptcy,'* the subject was satisfied
with the explanation, and imagined that we had
really unravelled that which, hitherto, he had *' never
succeeded in analysing" — although there was still
left a confused impression that there was something
to be discovered.
Here is another reminiscence of school life.
XI. Personally, most of the masters were kindly,
but the discipline was harsh. . . . We went on with
our studies until seven o 'clock. ... I had a particular
dislike for this evening work, for the four o'clock
spell of recreation, and for games. I hated all the
games. I was afraid of the balls, of being hit. My
schoolfellows' brutality, or rather their superabun-
dance of life, made me shrink into my shell, and I was
cold at heart during these grey winter amuse-
ments. . . .
Throughout the period of my school life I had
schoolmates but no friends. Sometimes, when we were
playing hide-and-seek, I would hide myself so effect-
ively with a book that my playmates, weary of looking
for me, would give up the attempt.
His mother coddled him.
XII. Almost every year I had slight attacks of
bronchitis. My mother . . . was inclined to overrate
their importance. She made me keep my room longer
than was necessary. In winter she dressed me much
too warmly instead of hardening me.
We must interpret all this in a moral sense as well
as in a physical.
330 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
A close association with the mother continued
until he was nearly grown up, and this was connected
with a new fantasy of the refusal of virility.
XIII. I went on sleeping in my mother's room
until I was fourteen years old. I slept in a girVs
nigJitgown over my day shirt and also in a flannel
waistcoat. I wore a girVs nightcap.
This intimacy was troubled by occasional storms,
but they invariably ended in an affectionate recon-
ciliation.
XIV. I was beginning to answer back. I wanted
always to have the last word, and my mother found
this exasperating. Sometimes she got into such a ter-
rible rage that she seemed ready to break everything
in the room. At the end of these quarrels I was ter-
rified, broken, annihilated. But when my mother had
calmed down, she felt remorseful, and she would come
and put her arms round me in my bed.
Despite this intense fixation upon the maternal
imago, the conscious attachment to the mother had
long ceased to preponderate. A displacement of
feeling towards other persons than the mother had
begun some time before this. In especial, Roger
had great affection for a girl friend, Maria, three
years older than himself, who taught him to read.
XV. I was not particularly affectionate towards my
mother, nor towards anyone else. But on rainy days
and in the evening I felt an inclination to nestle up
against Maria, and to go to sleep upon her shoulder.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 331
We have here one of the childish passions which
appear to be common accompaniments of the mater-
nal complex.^ This attachment cooperates with the
attachment to the mother in its tendency to distract
the child from rough games, and from virile amuse-
ments in general. It helps to confirm him in his
predilection for the contemplative life. Maria had
taught him to read.
XVI. I have already said that I had no inclination
either for games or for out-of-door sports. I detested
cards, and still do so ; I did not care either for draughts
or marbles. But I was fascinated with imaginative
amusements. I have always beon intensely fond of
reading, and I dramatised the novels I read and the
stories Maria told me.
Here is his description of Sunday.
XVII. I have mentioned how greatly I feared to
meet the boarders out walkrag, for I had a loathing
for the need to greet people, and I detested a crowd
in its Sunday best. All this seemed to me desper-
ately tedious and stupid. Maria and I always did
our utmost to avoid the infliction (going out for a
walk), and we were perfectly happy if we were left
at home in peace to play or to read.
These two reminiscences, XVI and XVII, embody
the same theme, and each of them has t^vo aspects :
1. Eefusal of virility and of social life (virile
sports, the boarders' walk);
^ Cf. Alexander's case.
332 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
2. Fliglit towards the girl friend of his childhood,
towards reading and the contemplative life.
The contemplative life leads straight towards
mysticism. As in so many cases of fixation upon
the mother, young Roger develops a passionate cult
of the Blessed Virgin.
XVIII. I had accesses of mysticism, of devotion to
the Blessed Virgin. In bed sometimes at night I
would curl myself up, saying my rosary. I loved
Corpus Christi processions.
It would seem that the image of his girl friend
was more intimately connected with this mysticism
than was the image of his mother (this reminds us
of the case of Dante and Beatrice). The proces-
sions conduct us to another procession; that of the
girls clad in white at the time of Maria's first com-
munion, a reminiscence which Eoger describes as
one of the most affecting of all his childhood.
However, Maria, while still quite young, had been
sent to board in a convent school. This remem-
brance serves as a symbol to Eoger for the repres-
sion of his childhood's sensibility which was simi-
larly cloistered, was bound fast to the image of his
girl companion. He went to see her at the convent,
and the memory of the visit is associated with that
of ''large, useless fountain basins, nearly dried up,
witnesses of a lost prosperity."
These numerous reminiscences have enabled us
to grasp the fundamental relationships between the
various symptoms and character traits of the sub-
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 333
ject. Roger ^s dreams seem to have been mainly
determined by his reaction to the analysis, and by
the tentative movements of his subconscious towards
health. Here are some fragments of one of these
regenerative dreams. One of the symbols reminds
us of the nearly dried-up fountain basins of the rem-
inescence last mentioned.
XIX. I had come away from an inn and was at the
edge of a pond. There was a wedding party, and two
young fellows, for a lark, were just making ready to
go into the water — ^for a swim no doubt. . . . Their
bodies were powdered, like that of a dancer. . . . The
weather was cold, but I was moved to follow their
example. I went into the water, but, finding that I
had no towel, I asked an old man to fetch me one
from the inn. When I wished to resume my bath,
I discovered that the pond had dried up, so that I am
doubtful if there was even a puddle left where I could
splash. Then I went to find my mother and my grand-
mother who were sitting in a shady corner. I told
them what I had been doing, and they were shocked
at my foolhardiness. But I told them that although
the water was extremely cold, so brief a dip was really
quite wholesome.
Here we perceive an effort to get away from his
mother's '^coddling,'' and to do something manly.
The **body powdered like that of a dancer'' seems
akin to the ** girl's nightgown" (XIII). But this
femininity is superficial; beneath, there is a mascu-
line torso. ^*The muscles stood out strongly."
Besides ^*the make-up will be washed off; that which
hides the truth and a wholesome life will disap-
834 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
pear." As for the *^old man," the association to
this is *' throw off the old Adam." To ^*inn" comes
the association '^Switzerland," a place of transit,
and a health resort as it were after internment in
the concentration camp. The '*pond," he says, was
*'in France.*' It suggests childhood, a group of
affects which have undergone fixation upon infan-
tile objects (like the dried-up basins), and which
have to be revivified. Furthermore, he wanted to
bathe because **the tint of the water was exquisite,
blue or green; it seemed that the sun was setting in
the water." This leads the subject to associate his
''wish to be braced up" with an ''sesthetic" wish.
^Esthetic development would appear to be looked
upon as wholesome. (Other dreams dwell upon this
aspect, and invite the subject to choose activities
which will satisfy his aesthetic needs.) There is a
sense of inadequate fulfilment pervading the dream.
In the next dream we encounter the same symbol
of France, the same feeling of inadequacy, and per-
haps (more specifically) of impotence. Military
images appear, representing virility.
XX. I am on my way back to France. A huge
hall. Someone suggests that we should pay for the
serving of the soup. I refuse. . . . The woman who
is ladling out the soup serves me after everyone else,
and gives me only a small helping, because I had
refused to pay.
I return to my native haunts. An old harness
maker cuts me dead; I feel that I am regarded with
contempt because I was not at the front. I sham a
limp.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 335
I go to the printer's. He says : '*I have some letters
for you. One of them is from Germany, with a book.
I have read your letters £ts censor.'* I am annoyed
at this, for he will have been able to learn about my
dreams.
*^I sham a limp," like the ^^ make-up'' of the
previous dream, is connected with other associations
in which the subject has an uneasy feeling that his
condition is a mask; illness seems to him a con-
venient means of hiding a lack of courage. * ' Serv-
ing the soup'' has as associations ** military serv-
ice," a ** disagreeable duty."
As for the * Sprinter," he is like me; and the allu-
sion to the dreams shows unmistakably that he sym-
bolises me. A certain resistance to the analysis
becomes manifest here. Moreover, the ^ better"
and the **book" are linked with the memory of his
friend in Germany, the woman who had a beneficial
influence, a purifying influence, upon him. This
** purification," just like the aesthetic sentiment a
moment ago, presents itself as a factor of equilib-
rium, of health and of cure. It is perfectly plain
that the dreams are assuming the character of guid-
ing dreams.
In some of the dreams the achievement of virility
is associated either with military symbols or with
sexual symbols.
XXI. I dreamed that the infirmary attendant of
the school I was at in Paris sent me to fetch a bag of
currants. ... I felt as if it were a fatigue duty in
336 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the army. ... In the distance there was a group of
young men and women. . . . Those in front were
kneeling or lying down, and were making gestures as
if they were shooting with bows and arrows.
The association with *^bag" was *Hwo wallets,"
and led us to an image of a bodily organ. In the
same dream appeared the name of one of the mas-
ters whom Eoger had to consult as to the choice of
a career. All the aspects of manliness, including
the choice of a career, find expression here. In the
next dream, sexuality is more explicit.
XXII. I consult the wise-woman close to her cot-
tage. She asks me to show her my genital organs.
. . . She takes me to a spring and bids me . . . wash
them.
Here, as before, there is manifest a desire for
purification. This is still more plainly disclosed in
the next dream.
ZXIII. I give a large porker a letter which is to
warn him of the danger threatening someone dear to
him. The pig takes me into a little room. There he
begins to talk to me in Provençal. I find it very diffi-
cult to follow, so I ask him if he understands Italian.
He answers in the affirmative, so I reply in Italian,
interspersed with English words. The pig's wife also
speaks Provençal, and I can't understand her at all.
She is like an old shrew painted by Ostade. She is
ashen grey with the colour laid on thickly.
From the associations it appears that the
''porker" is **the lower part of myself," and that
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 337
^'someone dear to him" is ^^tlie upper part." To
'^letters" we have the association ^'dreams" and
their analysis (cf. XX). The '* pig's wife" calls up
the following:
Marriage. I must not marry a woman who will
keep me in the state symbolised by the porker.
Thoughts concerning the choice of a career are
likewise disclosed. ** Provençal" is linked with
arduous scientific studies. ^^ Italian" is associated
with Italian art, of which Roger is very fond; this
brings us back to the aesthetic tendency, which offers
a way out of his difficulties.
We may conclude the account of this case by
recording two regenerative dreams, which are
mutually complementary. The first relates to the
infantile fixations and atrophies, of which the sub-
ject must become conscious before he can break their
spell. The second, like the dream about the porker,
emphasises the distinction between the upper and
the lower natures, and stresses the need for ** puri-
fication ' ' ( sublimation ) .
XXIV. I am a little girl. I am going to be mar-
ried. My girl plajTnates give me a brush made of
their hair. Each of them has contributed a little of
her own health to it, so that the united whole is to
make me thoroughly healthy.
Here are the associations to the items of this
dream.
338 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
7 am going to he married. Life with its joys and
its troubles. A full life which needs an abundance
of energy.
Hair. My friend the Grerman woman once said to
me : '*I wish I could take your illness and give you my
health." Hair reminds me of this friend who had a
great influence upon me.
The idea of a brush is connected in my mind with
that of regeneration. This is because a masseur used
a brush on me to restore the circulation.
In this dream, the German woman is condensed
with the girls with whom he was in love when he
was a child; she represents the purest feelings he
has experienced in his life. If *^ marriage*' is to
become possible to him, sexuality must be purified
until it comes to resemble these feelings. The
analysis is convincing the subject that his sexual
troubles have been of accidental and psychic origin
(due to a distasteful initiation) ; and that a **puri-
fication," putting an end to repressions, will enable
him to get over these troubles.
XXV. To prove her sincerity, the lady uses up her
long, black hair day by day until she has none left;
the brother of her lord undertakes to see that she is
purified daily in aromatic essences. Rabelais, mean-
while, is kept prisoner in the neighbouring castle, but
at length he is allowed to go oxit provided that he
keeps at least one hundred yards away from the castle.
He lives in an inn, surrounded by buffoons and cour-
tesans, that he may hunt love the more easily. When
he makes his way through the streets of the town, the
motley rout which attends him raises a clamour of
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 339
song and music which scandalises the ladies of the
noblesse.
The **long black hair" suggests **Mary Mag-
dalen" and his ^* German lady friend"; it also calls
up the *^ brush" of XXIV. To *^ aromatic essences"
come the associations: ^^ Goethe's Faust"; ^^ Christ
is risen." — ** Rabelais" calls up ^^obscenities," and
brings us back to the '^big porker" of XXIII; he is
repressed sexuality. **At length he is allowed to
go out," upon terms, these being such that the
** someone dear to him" (XXIII), though scandal-
ised perhaps, is at any rate protected from his as-
saults. As association to the word ** purify" comes
the reflection: *^It is true, I need purification."
We are not entitled to say that equilibrium and
harmony had been attained at this stage. Sugges-
tion and psychoanalysis had from the outset been
practised simultaneously, and although Roger was
not yet at the end of his troubles, there had been
considerable progress. The time had now come for
him to return to France, but the matter could safely
be left in his own hands. The next time I saw him,
about two years later, he assured me that he was
perfectly well.
3. Germaine
Spasm of the Eyelid. Fussy Activity.
Germaine is a woman of forty-nine, of peasant or-
igin, a widow, and childless. She has suffered from
a spasm of the right eyelid **for fifteen years at
340 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
least/' This is what she says at first. Then she
remembers that the spasm began in the year fol-
lowing her mother's death. At length her mem^ory
becomes more precise. A year after her mother's
death, on the anniversary, she went home in order
to visit the grave; it was then that people pointed
out to her that she had the spasm. It has been
treated unsuccessfully with bromides; electricity
was likewise tried, but had no effect.
Germaine also suffers from a persistent condition
of restlessness, of nervous uneasiness. She is al-
ways fussily active, having a feeling that she is be-
hind time and must hurry up. The condition is
often accompanied by ^* neurasthenic ideas."
The first dream subjected to analysis was con-
cerned with the before-mentioned anniversary of
her mother's death.
I. On the shore of the lake. She saw a large boat
which splashed her with dirty, greyish water, like
melting snow. The water rose; she was surrounded
by it. Someone called to her : ' ' Climb up here. ' '
The ** melting snow" appeared to be the centre
of gravity of this dream. It called up the first an-
niversary, when Germaine went home. But she
could not go to the cemetery, because of the dirty,
melting snow. The parish priest had said to her
that if the sun went on shining for three days all
the snow would be melted.
The parish priest turned up in the following
dream :
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 341
II. Germaine was in the country with a neighbour,
at a washerwoman's. She left some collars and some
underlinen to be washed. Then, still with her neigh-
bour, she found herself at the parish priest's. He
seemed to flirt with her; the other woman, who was
older than Germaine, was jealous. But a young
woman belonging to the priest's household warned
him, saying : * ' No, not the older one, I know what sort
of woman she is." (In fact, Germaine 's neighbour
is a light woman. ) . . . Germaine does not like dream-
ing about parish priests; ''it is a sign of bad news."
The analysis showed that the parish priest was
a substitute for the father, and that Germaine had
a strong fixation upon the father. '*I was much
fonder of father than of mother. I don't mean that
I did not like mother, but she did not return my
affection. I was not her favourite." Germaine
was the youngest of the family, and she had the im-
pression that her birth had not been entirely wel-
come. Her mother certainly could not have wanted
another child.
The neighbour who was older than herself sjm-
bolised Germaine 's elder sister. ''My sister and
I could not get on together." The sister's conduct
had laid her open to reproach, and in the dream
Germaine exaggerates her sister's misdemeanours
in order to abase her, and the better to justify her
own claim to the exclusive affection of the father.
The underlinen for the laundress has as association
the *' dirty snow" which was mentioned just now.
The *^ underlinen" also calls up the memory of a
dispute with her sister at the time of the father's
3é2 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
death. Her sister had wanted to carry off all the
father's underclothing. Quarrels with her sister
had been frequent ; especially there had been wrang-
ling about money matters connected with their late
father's property — this controversy was still unset-
tled. At another sitting, Germaine referred to her
jealousy of her sister; but, '^Eeally my sister was
jealous of me, for I was father's favourite." Her
sister had *4dled," whilst Germaine had worked
hard in order to ** economise." (It had been like
the grasshopper and the ant in the fable.) Work-
ing hard in order to economise leads us to Germaine 's
perpetual fussy activity. We discern one of those
persistent grudges which assume a virtuous and
honest form, but in which the virtue and the hon-
esty have a sub-flavour of vengeance. She has a
grudge against her sister. The dream stresses the
point that if Germaine is more worthy than her
neighbour (the sister) of the love of the parish
priest (the father) it is because Germaine is a bet-
ter woman. We begin to realise that the fussy
activity is the expression of a wish to outshine the
sister, and that underlying this wish there was a
desire to be more worthy of the father's affection.
The next dream reiterates the same attitude
towards her sister and her father.
in. The father's burial service. The cofiin has
been placed upon the altar. Germaine is looking on.
Her sister was there too, and was carrying a paraffin
lamp in the passage to light the people who were com-
ing up the stairs and who were to help in the settle-
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 343
ment of the property. There was a dispute between
herself and her sister about this matter.
Here, recalling my interpretation of the ** parish
priest,*' Germaine made a remark whose logical
force was questionable, though the idea came into
her mind as an irresistible conviction. She said:
^*The parish priest of the other dream may cer-
tainly have been my father, for in this dream I saw
my father's coffin on the altar." She believed that
her father had *^died a good death." We gather
that the father is looked upon by Germaine as hav-
ing been a person of great moral worth, and here is
an additional reason why a decent and hard-working
life should help to make her worthy of him. This
is the path of sublimation for her long-standing
jealousy of her sister. But the sublimation is in-
complete; the subject's attitude is intermediate be-
tween one of pure sublimation and one of neurosis,
for her desire to lead a decent and hard-working
life finds expression, not only in actions that are
morally estimable, but also in nervous fussiness and
aimless activities which Germaine herself regards
as ridiculous.
No doubt an additional factor must be invoked
for the full understanding of the fussy activity.
When Germaine dreams about her sister, the point
especially stressed is that the sister was *^ older"
than herself. This detail would seem to have a
peculiarly intimate relationship with the jealousy.
In Germaine 's fussiness, in her persistent feeling
that she needs to *^ hurry up," we may discern a
su STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
wish to overtake her sister, and to bring herself
nearer than her sister to the father's level. This
interpretation does not conflict with the previously
mentioned wish to surpass her sister morally; it is
superadded. It is furthermore in harmony with the
fantasy that appears in a subsequent dream, when
the father has been rejuvenated. This is another
way of bringing herself into closer approximation
with the father.
To complete my description of the case, I must
point out that Germaine has a strong desire, which
has never been fulfilled, **to be a mother." Apro-
pos of a dream in which she had held a child in her
arms, she said: **I never knew the joy of having a
mother who caressed me, or the joy of being a
mother." For her, these two phenomena were
linked. Asked for associations to the image of the
child in her arms, she said : * * Something one wants
to take care of. I don't like people to do me an
injustice. Quarrels with my sister." Ail this
shows that her longing to be a mother has been re-
inforced from the outset by her longing to grow up,
to take the place of her elder sister and of her
mother. The wish to be a mother was superadded
to the other wish as a factor of the dissatisfaction
which found expression in the perpetual dread of
being behind time.
Germaine soon got the better of the inclination
to fussy activity and of the associated **neuasthenic
ideas." As far as these troubles in the moral
sphere were concerned, she was amazed at the re-
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 345
suits achieved. But concerning the spasm, more
precise information was needed.
She recalled that when she was six years old she
had been butted off a rock by a goat, and that one
of the animal's horns had struck her below the right
eye. This reminded her of another accident, when
a falling stone had injured her right leg. The same
leg had been hurt by the goat. When she was men-
struating, varicose veins swelled up in this leg, and
simultaneously the facial spasm grew worse. The
trouble was also aggravated whenever there was a
snowstorm. The effect of snow, which was mainly,
if not entirely, psychic, had been elucidated by the
analysis, by the associations to dream I ('^melting
snow''). But the whole thing was still rather
vague. An interesting reminiscence now threw
light upon the matter.
ÎV. When Germaine was eighteen or nineteen years
old, a girl friend had told her that she was being
courted by a young man who had a spasm of the
eyelid. Germaine had told her friend that she had
better look out, because people who lived together were
apt to catch that sort of thing from one another.
Germaine had known a manufacturer with a spasm
of this sort who had given it to his wife.
Germaine added that this manufacturer lived near
a country house where she was housekeeper. She
did not see him often, for her mistress was very
strict and would seldom let her go out because of
the manufacturer's workmen, who liked to flirt with
the young housekeeper. She was nine years at this
346 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
house. She did not like the mistress at all. '*My
nerves were all on edge every time the old woman
gave me an order. ' ' Under the same roof there was
another mistress, a young lady, who, though much
better off than Germaine, was jealous of her appear-
ance. This lady seems to be more or less condensed
with the elder sister; whilst Germaine 's hostility
towards her mother (which, moreover, counts for
something in Germaine 's antagonism towards her
sister) has here been frankly transferred on to the
elderly mistress. Germaine 's obsession with haste
already existed at this date. She was seventeen
w^hen she went into service here, but ^ ^ she had given
herself out to be twenty " ; it was not until she was
really twenty that she admitted her true age.
While staying in this house, Germaine had a love
affair which came to nothing. Her failure to get
married had been mainly the fault of her * * old mis-
tress," who wanted to keep Germaine as house-
keeper, and had therefore exaggerated Germaine 's
** poverty" in order to frighten away the wooer.
We can now understand the significance of the
spasm to Germaine at this period. Imaginatively
she liked to put herself in the place of her girl
friend, who could marry without any *^old mistress"
to put hindrances in the way. Perhaps her friend,
if she married, would catch the husband's facial
spasm. But marriage was worth paying for, even
if one had to get facial spasm. It is thus that the
subconscious may be supposed to have reasoned.
But marriage would also, and mainly, have signi-
fied ^^deliverance from the authority of the old mis-
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 347
tress,'' an authority which was a substitute for that
of the mother. Many years later, at the time when
she was to have paid her first visit to her mother's
grave, the spasm was noticed for the first time.
The subconscious wish to be freed from her
mother's authority would appear to have been pre-
dominant in Germaine. This wish, which was
closely associated with her love for her father, was
an element in her desire to grow up, in her desire to
hustle through the stages of life, in her habit of
fussy activity.
During the week subsequent to this analysis, quite
a number of persons, spontaneously and independ-
ently, were struck by the diminution in the severity
of the spasm. Germaine herself felt that the eye-
lid was *'much less drawn up."
This is as far as improvement went. As re-
gards the moral condition and the general nervous
condition, a cure had been effected. The relief of
the spasm was only partial. I may add that sug-
gestion would appear to have had more effect upon
Germaine than the analysis. Her mind was not suf-
ficiently alert for the full significance of the analysis
to be appreciated by the conscious.
Here are two dreams which contain some inter-
esting allusions to the two methods. Dream V was
dreamed during the first month of the analysis.
V. Germaine was with a number of persons in a
large room *'like this one." She was with her hus-
band or her brother, probably it was her husband.
An acquaintance was there with her daughter. The
girl was crying because she had a sore finger. Then
348 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
I cleared the room, everyone went away, and Ger-
maine was left alone with me. Next I was painting;
I painted two heads larger than life; a man*s head
and a woman's. The woman was of a certain age.
Both the heads were upside down. The man's head
was not so detailed ; he was fairly young. I had writ-
ten something beneath the picture, but someone rubbed
it out as she tried ta read it.
The associations to *^ upside down'' were ** some-
thing which won't work properly," ** present state
of health." All the first part of the dream down
to the moment when *^I cleared the room" is a
dream reminiscence of the courses of autosugges-
tion in which the subject has participated. (One
of her fellow patients had had a very sore finger.)
The time when * ^ Germaine was left alone with me ' '
is the psychoanalytical sitting. The faces that I
painted were those of Germaine 's father and
mother; in connection with the first sittings I had
drawn attention to their respective rôles. When
asked for an association to **the woman of a cer-
tain age," Germaine said simply *^my mother." As
regards ^*the man," the association was: ^*I said
to myself that he was too young to be my father."
It is the father rejuvenated, in virtue of the wish
which has been explained. The hand which erases
the writing, symbolises the difficulty of the analysis.
The other dream belongs to the final stages of the
analysis.
VI. She was with a woman older than herself.
There had been a death. The room seemed very dirty.
TYPICAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 349
She said: **It's impossible to clean this; it must be
thoroughly done up."
The ^* woman older than herself is the sister once
more. The ^Meath'' immediately calls up that of
the father, and reminds the subject of the dream of
the coffin upon the altar (III). The very dirty
room is akin to the dirty water of dream I, and to
the dirty underlinen of dream II, and also to the
faces which are upside down seen in dream V. All
these things symbolise the disorder of the subcon-
scious, in association with the paternal complex.
The disorder is too much for her; she is not com-
petent to assimilate the analysis sufficiently to en-
able her to set things straight. The last phrase
symbolises the subject's intimate reaction to the
respective methods. To * ^ clean ' ' is psychoanalysis ;
to *'do up thoroughly '^ is suggestion.
CHAPTER TEN
MENTAL DISORDERS
Mental disorders, like nervous disorders, are sym-
bolical. The language of delirium is no more in-
scrutable than the language of dreams. Moreover,
not merely are these disorders symbolical, but they
are the symbols of the psychological frame of mind
from which the disorders spring. In the case of
mental disorder, therefore, just as in such cases as
Ave have hitherto been considering, psychoanalysis
is curative simultaneously with being interpretative.
But if the analysis is to do any good, it is essential
that the subject's consciousness should not be en-
tirely clouded. The future alone can tell us to what
extent psychoanalysis can influence mental disorders
for good. That it does influence them in certain
cases has been definitely proved.^
In the three cases expounded in this chapter, the
troubles are sharply localised, either because they
are specifically restricted to isolated systems of
ideas (ideas of persecution in Bertha, and ideas of
physical contamination in Ruth), or because they
are associated with certain transitory states (epi-
leptic states in George).
In Bertha, and still more in Ruth, infantile ele-
^ Bernard Harfs little volume, The Psyehology of Insanity,
numerous editions from 1912 onwards, may usefully be consulted
as to the bearing of psychoanalysis upon mental disorders,
350
MENTAL DISORDERS 351
ments have a preponderant importance. Underly-
ing the trouble in both these subjects was an ardent
wish to escape from the family environment. In
Bertha, this wish was complicated by a longing for
a more expansive and more intellectual life ; to some
extent the second wish may be regarded as a would-
be justification, as a rationalisation, of the first. In-
deed, delusions of persecution have been specially
studied as functions of hostility to the family en-
vironment.^ Bertha's persecution complex also
contained sexual elements. In Euth, the influence
of sexual factors was even more conspicuous; but
in this subject, too, the sexual factors were closely
associated with a protest against the environment,
and especially against the father (a step-father)
and against the improprieties he was guilty of
toAvards the child. A feeling of rape, of contamina-
tion, associated with the image of the father, under-
lay the fixed idea of the subject, who imagined that
she emitted an evil smell.
In George we have to do with mental disorder
of a very definite type, for he is an epileptic liable
to attacks of epileptic insanity. The insanity, there-
fore, is dependent upon a specific morbid state, and
it cannot be attributed to a psychological cause.
Nevertheless, psychoanalysis has shown that in epi-
leptic insanity the patients exhibit well-defined
complexes. There can be no doubt that these com-
plexes play their part in the production of the in-
sanity, even though the primary cause of the latter
^ Lang, Eine Hypothèse zur psyehologischen Bedentungder Ver
folgungsidecj 1914.
352 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
is the patient's physical condition. By analysing
the complexes we may perhaps hope that we shall
modify the insanity. No one will deny that night-
mare is caused by the physical condition of the
sleeper; nevertheless, psychoanalysis can relieve a
tendency to nightmare, for the disorder is also
brought about by the subject's complexes. The
value of psychoanalysis in helping the epileptic to
** sublimate ' ' some of his troubles, and even its value
in modifying to some extent the frequency or sever-
ity of the attacks, is categorically asserted by L.
Pierce Clark, who has reported some interesting
analyses of cases of epileptic insanity.^
1, Bertha
Introversion. Delusions of Persecution,
Neuhalgia.
Bertha is twenty-seven years old. Since childhood
her character has been reserved, stubborn, and
thrifty to excess. She belongs to the lower middle
class, and is fairly well educated, being rather better
off in this respect than the average of her surround-
ings.
Bertha is quite unenlightened in sexual matters,
displaying in this respect a certain childishness
which is surprising to her mother and her sister.
She is very definitely an introvert.
Her father was an alcoholic ; one of her maternal
aunts suffered from hysteria. When she was three
^ Clark, A Clinical Study of some Mental Contents in Epileptic
Attacks, 1920, pp. 367, 375.
MENTAL DISORDERS 353
years old, Bertha was sent to board witli this annt.
Then, when the mother wanted the child home again,
the amit refused to give her up, became abusive,
and struck the mother. The police had to be
called in.
When Bertha was five, she was boarded out with
strangers. The aunt kidnapped her, and told all
and sundry that the mother had abandoned her little
girl. When Bertha was nine, the aunt asked to
have the child to stay for a week, kept her beyond
the specified time, and finally sent her to board
somewhere else in order to hide her. When she was
six. Bertha saw her aunt in a hysterical attack.
When she was fourteen, she ran away from a school
where she was being ill-treated.
In 1914 Bertha was abroad, in one of the belliger-
ent countries. She was a governess, witnessed a
number of tragical scenes, and had to take flight
before the invaders.
During 1915 she was placed in an asylum. Her
family was notified. She was suffering from mental
disorder in the form of systematised delusions of
persecution. She complained of severe pains in the
head and the stomach, often refused her food, and
was obdurately silent. She refused to leave her
cell, and bit the nurses who tried to make her do so.
The Eed Cross Society secured her repatriation,
when her family and I myself had drawn attention
to the case ; she had to be brought in a special com-
partment, under close care.
She returned home in the beginning of 1916, and
354 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
there was marked improvement from the very out-
set, so that I am by no means entitled to claim all
the merit. I visited Bertha daily, and by the end
of the first week I was able to carry on a connected
conversation with her ; this enabled me to make sug-
gestions, and before long to teach her autosugges-
tion. She was perfectly calm, but in other respects
the symptoms of her mental disorder were persist-
ent. She declared she had been afraid of becoming
a victim of the white-slave traffic, and from time to
time she still suspected her mother of having bad
designs upon her. I continued to see her daily.
After four months, the pains in the head and the
stomach had entirely ceased, and her conversation
was no longer maniacal. No physical treatment had
been employed.
The symptoms which still persisted would not have
aroused the attention of anyone ignorant of her
antecedents, but to me they were significant.
Bertha had a dislike, one might almost say a re-
pugnance, for the housework which her mother, by
degrees, allotted to her. This work caused fatigue
that seemed out of proportion to the effort. She
did her work with marked distaste, dragging her feet
like a child which obeys with reluctance. Her ill-
humour at this time was perpetual, and her temper
was liable to flash out at any moment against per-
sons or things.
Now, a young man who had been engaged to her
called at the house. She received him coldly, almost
rudely, surrounding herself with a rampart of
silence. Without any open explanations, she showed
MENTAL DISORDERS 355
clearly that the idea of this marriage did not please
her. Nevertheless she refused to suggest that the
engagement should be broken off. She seemed to
be suffering from a conflict, and to be affected with
a confused malaise. It was the young man who
broke off the engagement.
At this juncture, psychoanalysis was methodically
undertaken. The reason for the new departure was
that the later symptoms (ill-humour, etc.) which
had been aggravated after her fiance's visit, seemed
to be associated with the idea of this marriage, and
suggested a clue. Moreover, for the last two months
a new bodily symptom had made its appearance, a
neuralgia of the left arm. This neuralgia had be-
come so violent as to interfere greatly with sleep,
and to make the use of the arm practically impos-
sible. If, at meals, Bertha attempted to pour her-
self out some water, she often found herself unable
to do so. As a sequel of autosuggestion under my
supervision, the neuralgia got much better, and was
transferred from the left arm to the right; but the
patient continued to suffer from it every day.
Here is a dream which analysis enabled me to in-
terpret.
I. Bertha was in a large crowd, entirely consisting
of persons of distinction. She caught sight of a young
man who was very tall and fair ; he spoke with a vulgar
accent, which shocked her. At this moment I was
near her, and I scolded her because she showed too
much sympathy for the young man. She was aston-
ished at my reproaches, and she remonstrated, saying
356 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
that the young man (who turned out to be a friend
of mine) was disagreeable to her on account of his
vulgar accent.
I asked Bertha for associations to the items of
this dream, and these associations speedily threw
light on the matter.
The *^ distinguished persons" called up other
dreams. She often dreams of distinguished, well-
dressed, and cultured persons. She envies them.
Sometimes she finds that she is herself one of them ;
she lives with them and talks to them; this is de-
lightful. In these other dreams I have not appeared,
but in them also she has been accompanied by a
** well-informed and cultured'' guide, for example,
the medical superintendent of the asylum. In the
other dreams, he played much the same part that I
played in the dream just recorded. I had soon recog-
nised in Bertha the half-explicit wish for a more
expansive and more ** cultured'' life, of which her
years as governess had given her a glimpse.
In the *^ young man who was very tall and fair,"
it was easy to recognise her fiancé in disguise, for
her fiancé was short and dark, and had a well-marked
rustic acc^; . Repression had made skilful play
with the mechanism of contrasts. The cause of the
antipathy she felt towards the young man in the
dream was his ^ Vulgar accent," which smacked of
a vulgar origin, and conflicted with Bertha's aspira-
tion towards a ^^ cultured life."
I realised that this aspiration was deeply rooted,
and that it must have been one of the hidden causes
MENTAL DISORDERS 357
of her malady. More especially it threw light upon
her lack of enthusiasm for housework and upon her
persistent ill-humour.
As soon as I explained all this to Bertha, she felt
that I was right. Great relief to the symptoms en-
sued. A few months later, her engagement was
renewed, the antipathy having been overcome thanks
to the analysis.
There was, however, something more at work than
a superficial antipathy. There was also a repug-
nance towards sexuality; the subject's whole being
bore witness to this, and her obsession with the
*' white-slave traffic'' was merely a salient expres-
sion of her general repugnance.
I should mention that the engagement, after
dragging on for a time, was again broken off, further
difficulties having arisen. It would be hard to say
how far the old conflict played a part in reinforcing
the reasons for the new rupture. Two or three
years later, Bertha married someone else.
The subject's obsession with the ** white-slave
traffic" suggested that we should find a connection
between her ideas of persecution and her antago-
nism to sexuality. Here are two typical dreams
showing the existence of this connectioiir
The first of these dreams was one she had while
in the asylum. At least, so Bertha says.
II. She was among some soldiers. Several of them
wore red uniforms, and they had extraordinarily long
daggers, still sheathed, but their hands were ready to
358 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
unsheath them at any moment. There was blood, much
blood, a lake of blood.
Then there was an avenue, a long avenue. Here
there were a lot of soldiers, and, turning round. Bertha
saw that there were also some civilians, who ran after
her in a crowd. They were all men.
The second dream is a nightmare she has fre-
quently had since adolescence.
III. She saw a man lying at the foot of her bed, in
the shadow, and at the mere sight of him she felt
terribly frightened. When she was about nineteen, a
modification ensued in the nightmare, and since then
the man has always held a dagger in his hand.
When Bertha was asked for associations, ** sol-
dier" called up ** weapon," *^red" called up
^' blood," and *4ake" called up ^' blood." The
weapon, with the threat which it implies, is the
centre of gravity of this vision. When she was
asked for the associations to the word ** dagger,"
there was no answer. The subject was manifestly
embarrassed. However, the conclusion we have just
drawn shows that the dagger was the most signifi-
cant item. Bertha's embarrassment, then, points to
an object of repression, and one need not be a Solo-
mon to recognise a sexual symbol. Furthermore,
** avenue" calls up *'a lot of trees" — ** bushy trees."
Here we have a kindred symbol. If any doubt re-
mains, let us recall that the crowd was **all men."
Now it is this crowd of men which 7'uns after her.
The ** soldiers" were the outcome of visions of the
MENTAL DISORDERS 359
war. The dread she had experienced owing to the
invasion by armed men had, by a most natural asso-
ciation, awakened sexual terror. As for the ^^man
lying'' at the foot of the bed, he was a reminiscence
of something that had really happened. Once a
drunken man, mistaking the landing, had come into
Bertha's bedroom and collapsed on the foot of the
girl's bed, in the position of the man in the night-
mare. She passed a whole night of terror, afraid
to utter a sound, her eyes fixed on the invader. It
is easy to infer that henceforward the image of this
drunkard would fuse in the subconscious with the
images of the step-father, who was a drinker. The
repugnance for a rough environment would coalesce
with repugnance for sexuality. There would thus
arise the condensation which finds expression in
Bertha's intense repugnance toivards vulgarity. We
now discern the unity underlying the most diverse
symptoms, ranging from delusions of persecution to
a dislike for housework, and not forgetting the sub-
ject's antipathy to her fiancé with the rustic accent.
We have, further, good reason to think that Bertha
must have been gravely predisposed to delusions
of persecution by the behaviour of her hysterical
aunt, and that this aunt's remarks concerning the
mother must have influenced the little girl's imagi-
nation. This is why, when the crisis came. Bertha's
suspicions tended to be concentrated on the mother.
Separation from her mother when Bertha was living
abroad reminded the subject of the days of child-
hood when she had visited her aunt ; and the analogy
was completed by a remarkable detail, for Bertha
360 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
had stayed with her aunt for the last week before
going abroad. We know that analogy of situations
can predispose to analogy in mental states.
The neuralgia of the left arm, occasionally trans-
ferred to the right arm, persisted as a daily trouble
when the other symptoms had apparently yielded
to treatment.
After a fruitless attempt to follow up various
clues, it occurred to me to ask Bertha if she had
ever known anyone who suffered from a severe
affection of the arm. In answer, came the following
reminiscence.
IV. When she was nine years old, her most intimate
friend had been a schoolfellow who had a paralysed
left arm. She was Bertha's namesake, and the two
Berthas were inseparable. One day her friend had
a fall, and injured the paralysed arm. She was laid
up for a long time. During this ilhiess, the mistress
of their class used to visit the invalid and bring her
books. The sick Bertha had taken advantage of the
period of enforced leisure to read, and acquire knowl-
edge. During this period, the invalid's sister had
done all the housework, workiag double tides, for the
family was not well off.
I knew enough. The accident to the arm in this
schoolfellow had secured for the latter leisure, and
opportunities for culture, and I knew that these were
my own patient's chief desire (see dream I). Fur-
thermore, the close association between the two
girls, the facts that they were of the same age and
MENTAL DISORDERS 361
bore the same name, had favoured perpetual com-
parisons, and had led to a sort of imaginative iden-
tification between the two companions. What was
true of one was true of the other. Everything hap-
pened as if my patient Bertha's subconscious had
reasoned as follows :
Through an affection of the left arm, my double
has secured leisure and culture. A similar affection
of my own ann will bring me the same good fortune.^
(I may add that my Bertha, like her friend, has
a sister, and that the latter, in fits of annoyance, has
frequently grumbled at Bertha for not doing her
fair share of the housework.)
By further questioning I secured confirmation of
my theory. I asked Bertha whether she had never
suffered from any ailment of the arm between the
age of nine and the recent onset of the neuralgia.
Oh, yes, since she was nine she had always had a
pain in the arm when she was carrying a muff. I
asked her to show me the position in which her
friend had held the paralysed arm, and then to show
me the position of her own arm in the muff. The
positions were identical, with the same drop at the
wrist.
I promptly explained to Bertha the origin of her
neuralgia. This trouble, the last redoubt in which
the protean illness had concentrated its forces, dis-
appeared that very day.
^ This case of neuralgia resembles the case of contracture psy-
choanalysed by Dr. Charles Odier (op. cit.).
362 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
2, Ruth
A Fixed Idea. Impeessions of Rape.
I record here a few significant details from the
analysis of an extremely complicated case.
Ruth is twenty-four years of age. She has a fixed
idea about which she will allow no argument; she
imagines that she emits an evil smell, that everyone
notices it, and that no one dares tell her. This no-
tion paralyses all her social life.
Ruth's childhood was most unhappy.^ Her mother
was arrested for ill-using her. Ruth can recall the
incidents.
I. She was sleeping in a garret. The snow was fall-
ing on her bed. Her mother used to make her get up
first. That morning, Ruth pretended to be asleep.
Her mother plunged Ruth 's head into a basin of water,
then she tied the child to the leg of a wash-stand, and
went to fetch the milk. Someone knocked at the door ;
it was one of her aunts. Ruth explained what had
happened, and the aunt fetched the police.
Ruth added that she was passionately fond of
her mother in spite of everything, and the child
suffered at being separated from her mother. She
remembers that when she was a child she was afraid
of being alone, especially in the evening. When she
^ The main details of her life as a child have been independently
confii'med; they were not imaginatively constructed by the subject.
MENTAL DISORDERS 363
awoke in the morning, slie used to say to her mother ;
**Have I got to go out into the wide, wide world?"
She recalled a dream she had had when about five
years old.
II. She was at sea, in a boat filled with water where
there was no room for her feet. She saw a whale's
head with a huge eye. She had the feeling that this
was a monster which would swallow her. A feeling
of intense loneliness. Then she saw that the shore
was lined with a row of tubs filled with water.
The sea-monster is the mother, whose way it was
when in a temper to plunge the child's head into a
tub or a basin. This had given Ruth a phobia of
water. When she was in her bath, the reflecting sur-
face of the water frightened her, and she had to
ruffle it. Nevertheless, the child was devoted to the
** monster,'' and her attachment prevented her from
going ^'into the wide, wide world."
The reason for Ruth's attachment to her mother
was that her father, or I should say her step-father,
was even worse than the mother, if possible. He
would come home drunk. His conduct towards the
child was indecent both in word and deed. Here is a
reminiscence.
III. It was one evening when Ruth came home late
with her step-father. He had taken her into a public
house ; she had been afraid of a man with no legs, and
she had been beaten. When she got home, her father,
who was drunk, wanted to make her drink some
absinthe. When she refused, her mother plunged her
364 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
head into a pail of water. She felt she was being
suffocated.
The absinthe is symbolic of all the improprieties
of the drunken step-father, who at a later date was
to make a definite attempt to rape the child. It
was apparently as an outcome of this scene that
Euth acquired a phobia of buttons and of dress-
hooks. It made her *^feel dirty'' to look at them.
She always had to wash her hands after hooking up
her dress.
To this scene there were superadded other scenes
of assaults upon her person, sometimes by the step-
father and sometimes by others. It is likely enough
that there has been exaggeration about some of these
details, but the important point is, not so much their
degree of objective reality, as the impression they
made on the subject. Here is one of them.
IV. She had been sent to the village for some bread.
A gentleman she did not know took her by the hand
and led her into a little wood. He rummaged in her
pocket. Instinctively she was seized with fear, and
managed to run away.
In their totality, these memories have left a strong
impression of violation, a feeling of contamination,
which disclosed itself as the origin of the fixed idea
of ** emitting an evil smell.'' The ** little wood"
in reminiscence IV led us to another reminiscence.
V. She wanted to run away from her aunt's, no
doubt in order to go back to her mother (her aunt
had taken charge of her after the scene when the
MENTAL DISORDERS 365
police were called in). But she turned back because
she had to pass near the lunatic asylum and the little
wood. She was afraid both of the asylum and of the
wood. She fancied there must be a monster in the
little wood ; she heard it cough one day.
We know already the meaning of the little wood.
Thus in Ruth, the wish to return to the mother,
the fear of rape, and the fear of madness, seem to
be closely linked, and this association will help us
to understand many of the symptoms. In any case,
the mental disorder is directly connected with the
idea of rape or contamination.
Furthermore, we have seen that the refusal of
the step-father's *' glass of absinthe '* (a symbol of
rape) led to the action of the mother, who plunged
the child's head into the pail where she felt she was
being suffocated. The dread of the father, the dread
of rape, and the dread of the ^^wide world,'' are all
one; it is this dread which impels the subject back
towards the mother — and towards the loneliness
where one is stifled. The impression of ** emitting
an evil smell" is, from one point of view, a ration-
alisation to justify the repudiation of the social in-
stincts, to justify a flight from the world. It is also
probable that, in the subject's imagination, the idea
of the head in the water has become a symbol of
purification. Thus the mother's violence does not
merely represent to Ruth the choice of a lesser evil,
it represents a positive good.
Ruth will not feel that she has been enfranchised
unless she secures the conviction that she is not an
366 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
object of disgust. That which her subconscious
chiefly demands of me is that I should prove that I
myself have no disgust; this proof and health are
one and the same thing. She expresses the idea in
a beautiful dream.
VI. On the shore. Jesus, very large, appears in
a large boat. The scene changes to an arcade. Ruth
sits down on a step, and Jesus sits down on the next
step below. A deformed creature was there; it came
towards Jesus. So repulsive was its aspect that she
wondered whether Jesus would be able to touch it.
Not only did he touch it, but he actually embraced it,
and she wept on seeing disgust overcome. Then a
little tableau appeared; she saw a young man seated
on an ass ; it was the deformed creature of a moment
ago, cured.
In association, the ** deformed creature" reminds
her of the legless man the memory of whom is asso-
ciated with the scene of the *' glass of absinthe"
(III) — a condensation of all the scenes of rape.
This deformed creature is Euth herself, under the
repugnant aspect which she believes herself to have.
No doubt the conviction that she is repugnant arose
out of scenes of such a character. Jesus is the guide
and the healer. He sits upon the lower step to show
that he does not despise her. The young man seated
on the ass is Jesus himself on Palm Sunday. Herein
is disclosed a wish for identification with the guide ;
mth myself, that is to say. Here we have *^ trans-
ference on to the analyst" in an extreme form. Of
course the guide, in this case, greatly transcends my
MENTAL DISORDERS 367
own personality. Kuth is sublimating the idea of
the guide into a religious aspiration (we shall note
a similar phenomenon in the subject Stella), and
the transference wishes to sublimate itself into a
sort of mystical union.
3. George
Mental Aberrations in an Epileptic.
Epilepsy began in George at the age of fifteen, tak-
ing the form of sudden and brief lapses of conscious-
ness, and of a few convulsive seizures. He is now
twenty-two. He has been treated in various ways,
with bromides, with a proprietary preparation
known as sédobrol, and by homeopathy. Speaking
generally, there has been an increase in the fre-
quency of the attacks. He now has several attacks
of minor epilepsy every week as well as convulsive
seizures almost daily. The diagnosis of genuine
epilepsy has been made several times.
Since the age of nineteen, probably owing to the
use of bromides, his memory has grown defective, and
his intellectual processes are less rapid. This slug-
gishness of intellection has been especially marked
since the treatment with sédobrol. George does not
always grasp what is said to him; he finds it diffi-
cult to understand a jest; he does not notice a pun
unless it is explained to him.
The first attack of mental aberration occurred
when he was twenty-one years old. It lasted ten
days, and took the form of religious mania.
368 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
I. George is convinced that his illness is a punish-
ment sent by God for his sins. He remains calm and
gentle.
Three months later he had a fresh attack of men-
tal disorder, violent mania this time. He had to be
put under restraint for ten days.
Two months later came a third access of mental
alienation.
II. George is convinced that he has just undergone
a transformation, that he has passed from youth to
manhood. He asks his father when the latter under-
went a similar change, and whether all young men
suffer from it. He says that it is frightful. He is
irritable and easily grows angry with his mother.
Another attack occurred about six weeks later.
III. Once more there was religious mania compli-
cated by sexual disquietudes. George thought that in
the first days of the life of mankind, man and woman
constituted a single being. They wanted to separate,
and disobeyed God, who punished them. Woman is a
perpetual temptation for man; man is rendered un-
happy by his vices, and especially because he is always
wanting to satisfy his desire for women.^ — George read
the book of Genesis, and underlined all the passages
containing sexual allusions.
This attack of alienation lasted twelve days. At
the end, George told his mother all he had done and
^ George declared in his normal condition that he had had strong
sexual desire, but had always resisted it.
MENTAL DISORDERS 369
felt, adding: **IVe been balmy.'' The attacks of
mental disorder became more frequent, and another
access of mania began a month later. Just before
this period of disorder George had heard a lecture
upon the need that young men should be scrupu-
lously pure in body and mind, and he had been
greatly impressed by it. For a week, nothing hap-
pened, and then the new aberration appeared in a
violent form.
IV. George heard voices ordering him to sacrifice
himself to save the wicked and perverse human race
and to put an end to the war. He was the repre-
sentative of Christ in the twentieth century; for a
moment he was even Christ himself. To obey the
voices he must, in a public place, make a declaration
which would be revealed to him. In fact, one Sunday
afternoon, when he and his father were out walking
on one of the quays in the centre of the town, George
climbed on the parapet and began: *^My breth-
ren,'' . . .
His father was able to lead him away, for George
made no resistance except in words. After supper
he went for another walk with his father and dis-
cussed the matter. He spoke of having opposed the
voice; he knew that his parents would be annoyed
by his action, and that everyone would regard him
as a lunatic. He seemed to speak quite rationally
and added that if something remarkable should hap-
pen in the world, this would be a sign that he had
been right ; if nothing should happen, it would show
that he had been out of his mind.
370 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
During the same period, he frequently said that he
must resist temptation, must reform his conduct
[which did not need reform], must take Jesus as his
model.
It was during this attack of mental disorder that
I first saw George.
It would be beyond the scope of the present work
to study such a case as this in its entirety. Besides»
I was not able to follow up the case for more than
two months. From the general point of view, I
shall merely note that during these two months,
when psychoanalysis and suggestion were being
practised, there was no attack of mental disorder.
Furthermore, and this is very interesting, the inter-
vals between the attacks of minor epilepsy became
considerably greater (eleven days), and the con-
vulsive seizures were much less frequent, for they
no longer occurred every day. I do not know how
far these results were durable, for I was unable to
keep the patient under observation.
But George's epilepsy is not the topic of this
study. My purpose merely is to show what psycho-
analysis can teach us concerning mental aberrations.
As regards the relationship between these aberra-
tions and epilepsy, the attitude of Dr. Mercier is
extremely judicious. He writes : ^ * Closely as epi-
lepsy and insanity are often associated, it is no
more justifiable to regard the epilepsy as the cause
of the insanity, than to regard the insanity as the
cause of the epilepsy in those numerous cases in
MENTAL DISORDERS 371
which epileptic convulsions occur in the final stages
of insanity. All that we are justified in saying is
that insanity and epilepsy are very closely associ-
ated. * ' ' This much is certain, that although the
epileptic condition obviously determines the mental
troubles, the content of these is the outcome of psy-
chological causation, is dependent upon complexes.
This is proved by the possibility of a psychoanalysis
in such cases.
At the first glance we can detect a certain uni-
formity in the various attacks of mental disorder.
The patient's father, commenting upon them, ar-
rived at a sound conclusion. He said:
To sum up, it is plain that in each attack he has
had fixed ideas of a religious category and of a sexual
categorj^ and that the former have been the sequel
of the latter much as retribution follows sin.
What was the **sin*' in this case? The analysis
of a first dream at once conducted us by associations
to '* playmates'' and to a ''summer-house in a gar-
den behind the house." This summer-house is the
place where the bicycles are kept. It was here that
some of his playmates initiated George into mas-
turbation, which he subsequently practised. Here
is the ''sin" which he cannot forget, which weighs
so heavily on his conscience, and which he believes
to be the unmentionable cause of his illness. Apro-
pos of the summer-house, he added:
1 Mercier, A Textbook of Insanity, 1914, pp. 271-2.
372 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
V. With his playmates he dug quarries near the
summer-house ; there they buried things and dug them
up later.
This brings us to the ordinary fantasies of intro-
version: an object which has been buried, '* re-
pressed," and which has to be dug up again. The
image of the sununer-house is the link between the
introversion and the autoerotic act.
Some of the associations to the same dream sug-
gest a condensation of George's bicycle with the
membrum virile.
The existence of this condensation is confirmed in
the following:
VI. I am on a huge rock ; I am holding my hicyde
m my hatid; Father is beside me ; we want to take the
road which is in front of us. Father says : ' ' We must
go round and get down by the slope." — I want to
jump down, first I throw down my bicycle, and when
I do so I see it break up into fragments.
This dream gives expression to George's fixed
idea of ' * sin, ' ' the sin we know ; and of the catastro-
phe which the subject believes to have been its con-
sequence.
The association to **rock" is the stones *'in the
garden behind the house." To the word *'jump"
came the same association. We already know what
there is in the garden behind the house, namely the
summer-house. *'The road which is in front of us"
symbolises masturbation. The error here is dis-
obedience to the father. But it is more than dis-
MENTAL DISORDERS 373
obedience; it is ^ * repudiation of the father/' or
repudiation of virility, such as we ordinarily jBn-
counter in introverts.
The refusal of virility is clearly expressed in II
and III. In III, we have a fantasy of the return to
the infantile state which preceded ^'sin,'' thé state
in which ^'man and woman constituted a single be-
ing/' Sin is contemporaneous with the appearance
of sexuality. In II, the transition to the state of
manhood is regarded as something ** frightful. "
Nevertheless, the absence of virility is a lack, and
the subject wishes to fulfil himself. This desire finds
expression in the following dream.
VII. I am on the Promenade Saint Antoine where
there are a great many trees. There are many boys
there, coming out of school. I see my grandfather,
who is wearing a tall hat. I want to pass him un-
noticed, but he has seen me and calls me. We walk
on together, and we find on the ground a picture show-
ing the heads of the seven federal councillors, and a
picture of the leaders of the Swiss army.
Questioning George, I learned that the grand-
father had died after the onset of the epilepsy. He
was no longer * équité all there'' (like George). In
the dream he makes himself complete by wearing **a
tall hat." Everything in this dream symbolises the
reconquest of virility. The pictures discovered on
the ground represent leaders (the father) ; they are
pictures which were actually bought by George one
evening when, in a transient fit of mental alienation,
374 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
he had groundlessly telegraphed to his brother, who
was abroad: ^* Return immediately. ' ' As we have
seen in other individuals of the same type as
George,^ the brother, like the father, symbolises the
virility which the subject feels himself to be lacking
in. It is to this virility that George launches the
appeal: *^ Return immediately." Asked for asso-
ciations to ** leaders of the army," George said:
**My brother is on military service; I have never
done mine."^
It is possible that the attitude of the subconscious
towards the **father" explains George's strange
action in IV, when he climbed on to a parapet over-
looking the water in order to deliver his testimony.
Here is a relevant reminiscence of travel.
VIII. At Altorf. — We stopped to admire the statue
of William Tell. What a splendid head; how it
breathes determination and courage! A true Swiss,
the man whom this stMue represents. And his fine
little boy, how boundless the confidence in his attitude,
in the pretty face turned towards Lis father.
My brother N. climbed on to one of the fountains
and photographed us standing at the foot of the
monument,
"We note with interest how climbing on to a para-
pet beside the water is related with such images.
William Tell is preeminent among heroes who re-
fuse, and who strike down the *^ leader" — the motif
^ Otto, Alexander, and Roger.
^ Cf. isimilar associations in Alfred, infra.
MENTAL DISORDERS 375
of so many traditions. Such traditions owe mucli
of their influence to the fact that they invariably
arouse as an echo in the mind the subconscious
drama of the child and the father. William TelPs
son, in turn, represents another aspect of the same
drama. He ^* turns towards his father'' with
** boundless confidence.'' With the same boundless
confidence, George, impersonating Christ in the
parapet episode, turns towards his divine Father.
We may suspect in all this, vague relationships
which it would be presumptuous to specify with more
precision, but they remind us of a verse by Victor
Hugo in the Mariage de Roland:
** L'enfant songe à son père et se tourne vers
Dieu."^
We can now discern that the war which, in his
mental alienation, George wishes to bring to an end,
must be, before all, the subconscious war of the son
against the *' father." Li like manner the '*sin"
has been a disobedience to the **father," and sin
must now be atoned for.
However much the details may vary in these last
episodes, in essence they confirm our interpretation.
We find in George's aberrations unmistakable ex-
pressions of the complexes we have discovered in
other introverts: homosexual fantasies; protest
against the father; repression of virility. Even
though the mental disorder may be primarily de-
^ The child thinks of its father and turns towards God. — Cf.
Vodoz, Roland, un symbole, Paris, 1920; and Bovet, Le sentiment
filial et la religion, 1920.
376 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
pendent upon a physiological state which has noth-
ing to do with the complexes, it is upon the com-
plexes that the specific aspect of the mental disorder
depends.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SUBLIMATIONS
Sublimation is a comprehensive term, denoting
every kind of successful derivation of instinctive
energy towards ends possessing spiritual or moral
value. Sometimes we speak of the sublimation of
an instinct, and sometimes of the sublimation of a
nervous disorder or of a symptom. At first, the
latter use of the term may seem somewhat obscure,
but it offers no difficulty to those who understand
the bearing of what has just been said concerning
* ^ derivation. " When we say that an instinct is
sublimated, we mean that a new and better channel
has been opened for the current of instinct. When
we say the same thing of a nervous disorder, we
must recall that this disorder is itself a derivative,
an undesirable derivative, of thwarted instinctive
energy. To sublimate this trouble is to substitute a
desirable derivative for an undesirable one.
In the first two cases, those of Alfred and Ida,
we are concerned with typical sublimations of cer-
tain disorders. Nature has not waited for psycho-
analysts to discover this means of salvation. The
respective sublimations in Alfred and Ida are aris-
ing spontaneously. So much the better ; the analyst
must study these germinal sublimations. He will
377
378 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
do better to guide them where they exist rather than
to attempt the imposition of some arbitrary subli-
mation which might not be conformable to the sub-
ject's disposition. For Alfred, the choice would
appear to be between his neurosis and music. Ida
sublimates into drawing, troubles of a sexual origin.
In both cases I am content to guide, to encourage.
Crises occur during the process of sublimation.
It may be threatened by the assaults of crude in-
stinct; it may vacillate between different paths, so
that a state of conflict ensues. In the case of
Gerard (studied in Chapter Six), sublimation was
exposed to both these difficulties. A struggle be-
tween sublimation and crude instinct is common in
adolescents. In these cases the subject feels that
his sublimation is imperilled, and keen distress is
thereby aroused. Such is the case of Adam. A
conflict arising from vacillation between two ends
is manifest in Jeanne, who is simultaneously at-
tracted by art and by moral and social activities.
The position is complicated in her case because all
the active forces of her being are in search of a new
path. She is stirred, not only by the sexual instinct
and the associated feelings, but also by the maternal
instinct, which has no object to lavish itself on.
In the case of Queenie, the aesthetic tendency does
not alone suffice, and part of the subject's energies
are devoted to moral and religious feeling.
It is in the guidance of sublimation that the ana-
lyst does the finest work and incurs the greatest re-
sponsibility. It is in this field that he becomes a
veritable educationist and a spiritual director.
SUBLIMATIONS 379
1, Alfred
Stammering. Maladaptation to Social Life.
A Taste foe Music.
Alfred has stammered, so he believes, since he was
two or three years old. "When he came to consult
me he was twenty-two. He spoke in a rambling
fashion, hardly giving me a chance to get in a word
edgewise, and answering my questions irrelevantly.
His movements were awkward. There was an evi-
dent maladaptation to social life.
The family history was bad. There were several
neuropaths in the family, and a sister was under
restraint.
He was a bank clerk. He said that his stammer
was most troublesome when he was at work.
During the analysis, several of Alfred's dreams
related to the sister who is in the asylum. There
are many indications that his sister symbolises him-
self, that his sister's mental condition is identified
in his mind with his own. In the first dreams, the
sister's case is hopeless. A little later, it appears
that she will get well in time, but that *^the cure
will be a lengthy atfair." Alfred's concern regard-
ing his future also finds expression in the dreams.
He does not like his work at the bank, and wonders
'*what he will do later." In the depths, this ques-
tion seems to be at one with the problem of his cure.
He dreamed on one occasion of another bank clerk
who had been his fellow w^orker for four years, and
380 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
who symbolised himself. In the dream, this com-
panion spoke of throwing up his job. After the
dream, Alfred remarked: *^I stammer more when
I am doing anything which bores me.'' But if the
bank does not suit him, whither do his thoughts turn,
and what is the ** future'' on which his mind dwells?
Another series of dreams throws light on this mat-
ter. Here is the first of the series.
I. Last night I had a lovely dream. It was about
music. I found myself in front of a shop where a
number of music scores were exposed in the window.
I felt happy, as if I were going to buy one of them,
the one which seemed to me most beautiful in melody
and in feeling.
In another dream he was playing at railways as he
used to when a child, but he had not much time for
he was going to the theatre that evening.
When analysing these dreams I learned that this
simple bank clerk had a great love for music. All
his leisure time was given to music. Not only could
he sing without stammering, but he did not stammer
when he was talking about music, *'Eailway" pro-
duced as association the reminiscence of a German
tour, of a visit to German cities and to concerts
where Alfred had received his strongest musical
impressions. Moreover, the German tour and the
thoughts concerning a future career were associated
with the thought of an uncle, who occupied a good
position in Germany. This uncle had shown an in-
terest in Alfred, and perhaps would show more.
SUBLIMATIONS 381
Anotlier motif in Alfred's dreams gave expression
to the wish for a vigorous, wholesome, and manly-
life, one that should be unconstrained, the very op-
posite to the life of constraint and maladaptation to
society which the subject was now leading.
II. I had a swimming lesson at the baths, but I
could not learn to swim. The swimming master was
the man who had been gymnastic master at school.
Discussing this dream, he said: **I suppose I was
learning to swim in order to get strong.'* Asked
for associations to ** gymnastic master,'' he thought
of the gymnastic class, and of his schoolmates, with
whom he compared himself to his own disadvantage.
In the next dream, this motif becomes fused with
that of music.
III. I had another dream about music. I was sing-
ing something from an operetta to a number of per-
sons in a courtyard ; I was dressed as a soldier in uni-
form. The audience was much moved.
The associations to ^'soldier" were similar to
those to ** swimming master" in the former dream.
Alfred thinks that it was because of his stammer
that he was regarded as unfit for military service.
In the dream he is a soldier, so he is cured. He has
attained to virility and self-assurance; but at the
same time he devotes himself to music.
The family history led me to suppose that a con-
stitutional condition must underlie the subject's
382 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
nervous disorder. Nevertheless, the close connec-
tion in the dreams between the idea of music and
the idea of cure, and the positive fact that when
Alfred was thinking of music he ceased to stammer,
were strong indications that music might have a
definite therapeutic value. Everj^thing happened as
if a nervous excitability, partly constitutional and
partly acquired, had to find an outlet in one of two
alternative paths, the neurosis or the aesthetic sub-
limation.
His work as bank clerk, which was an obstacle to
the aesthetic culture he longed for, aggravated his
stammer. I had to make him understand that this
defensive reaction was an inauspicious means of
defence ; that, far from facilitating the development
he longed for, it could only hinder that development.
Autosuggestion and breathing exercises were
practised concurrently with the analysis. I also
encouraged the musical trend, while avoiding any
implication that the subject had a musical career
before him.
After a month, a considerable improvement could
be noted, both in respect of the awkwardness and of
the stammer. At the bank, indeed, when in the
presence of his chief, Alfred stammered as of old.
There was doubtless at work here, in addition to
the protest against his occupation, an infantile fear
of the father, which had undergone a transference
on to the chief. But I was unable to continue the
analysis, for the subject had to leave Geneva.
SUBLIMATIONS 383
2. Ida
Sexual Shock at Puberty. Maniacal Disturbances.
ESTHETIC Sublimation.
Ida belongs to a family endowed with artistic
sensibilities. Her brother has produced some strik-
ing specimens of automatic writing and of subcon-
scious painting. She is sixteen years old. Her de-
velopment was precocious, and she began to men-
struate before she was twelve. Not very long after
this period, she had a nervous shock. One evening,
when it was already growing dark, she was on the
rear platform of a tramcar, alone except for one
other passenger, who took advantage of the situa-
tion to practise exhibitionism and to make signifi-
cant gestures. She did not understand what he
meant, but the incident made a deep impression on
her mind.
Since then, at the menstrual periods, she has been
subject to mental and nervous crises. Each crisis
lasts several days, and is often quite alarming. The
disturbance may take the form either of excessive
cheerfulness or of melancholy; in addition it is apt
to manifest itself in one of the two following ways :
1. Sometimes the girl devotes herself to arrang-
ing various objects , such as plants, dolls' clothing,
etc., with meticulous care. One evening she actually
went to sleep with the conviction that she had not
finished this work of arrangement, and that it was
essential to rise very early next morning in order
384 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
to prepare for the proper reception of visitors (who
were quite imaginary). The ostensibly futile activ-
ity she displays at such times is strangely dispro-
portionate to the end in view and to the results
secured.
2. Sometimes the crisis takes the form of phobias,
hallucinations, and maniacal speeches. These are
all dominated by ideas of persecution. Incessantly
there recurs in them the vision of a magician who
has put an evil spell upon Ida, a spell which she
believes she is unable to throw off.
The second group of symptoms was readily com-
prehensible. Manifestly the shock had induced a
state of alarm, more or less subconscious, and con-
nected w^ith sexual matters.
I considered that the first group of symptoms re-
quired careful study. It is this study which I shall
now describe.
Ida did not take kindly to the analysis of her
dreams, but I was able to study the arrangements
of various objects which became such a passion for
her during the successive crises.
First of all I asked her parents whether she paid
much attention to her dress. I received the answer
I expected. Ida detests anything in the nature of
coquetry, any special care for her attire, anything
which she calls ^' smart.'' On the other hand, she
has innumerable dolls, and she dresses these with
all the care which she withholds from her own attir-
ing.
SUBLIMATIONS 385
The mechanisms of repression and substitution
were manifest. To the alarm symbolised by the
crises which took the form of ideas of persecution
and of phobias, there was superadded a sense of
disgust, likewise induced by the shock, and sym-
bolised by the other crises.
Disgust for sexual matters was transmuted into
a disgust for coquetry; while coquetry was objecti-
fied, dolls being substituted for her own person.
This coquetry was even extended to all kinds of ar-
rangements of objects.
I subsequently learned that Ida was fond of draw-
ing, painting, decorative work, etc., and that she had
quite a talent for this sort of employment. Above
all, she had a fancy for drawing stylate plants.
In this occupation, presumably, there was an exten-
sion of the same objectification.
I examined her work. All the stylate plants were
so arranged as to represent, with the persistency
of a fixed idea, two symmetrical motifs separated by
a central, elongated motif (the male organs).
The other drawings and paintings were nearly all
representations of landscape; in nine out of ten of
these landscapes, trees played the dominant rôle.
There was a preference in favour of fir trees; the
shapes were conical and elongated, and the verdure
recalled that of pines or of ferns. The first land-
scape represented a solitary pine. In the others
the stress was always on a tree which occupied an
excessively prominent position in the picture, stand-
ing right in the foreground. I had not commented
386 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
on this when the young artist said to me: *'I can
draw anything I like quite well, except trees, I jfind
them so difficult; they donH come easily.''
A tree, with its foliage and its conical form, was
obviously a sexual symbol, and it is a familiar fact
that it plays this part in dreams. To the subject it
symbolised the repressed vision, and that is why the
tree ^^did not come easily."
Next I examined the dolls. The older ones rep-
resented ladies in huge hats, and wearing enor-
mously large dresses, like crinolines. The later ones
were more interesting; women and men (more of
the latter) wearing sugar-loaf hats. The conical
form which was so notable in the trees of the land-
scapes, turned up here with the same fixity. In
the most recent doll, the head had been entirely
replaced by a cone ; and this cone, instead of sticking
up like a hat, curved forwards into a point. Two
huge spheres represented the eyes, from which there
projected a curled feather like a tuft of hair. An-
other tuft grew from the forehead, forming a kind
of central eyebrow.
As for the dolls wearing pointed hats, Ida called
them ^^ magicians." Thus all these creations were
linked with the *^ magician" who appeared in the
maniacal crises. Aposteriori, therefore, we obtained
a verification of the kinship of the two kinds of
crisis.
The crises of objectified coquetry thus seemed to
be in search of a cure by means of a spontaneous
aesthetic sublimation. The juxtaposition of the ma-
gician of the maniacal attacks with the doll magi-
SUBLIMATIONS 387
cian might even lead us to suppose that this par-
ticular sublimation was tending to become an outlet
1 for both kinds of crisis. Such an objectification of
coquetry, which loses all its sexual and interested
significance when displaced from the person on to
things, is unquestionably a phenomenon which must
not be overlooked when we are attempting to explain
the ultimate genesis of the plastic arts. As for the
transformation of the alarming into the beautiful
(seen here in the magician), is not this, in miniature,
what Nietzsche considers to be the *' origin of
tragedy*'? It might even be interesting to trace, in
this effort towards the sublimation of the two kinds
of crisis (dionysiac crises of mania and apollinian
crises of dressing up), an epitomised version of the
duplex genesis of art as conceived by Nietzsche, that
amazing forerunner of psychoanalytical ideas. How-
ever this may be, such subconscious initiations of
aesthetic trends in individual minds can certainly
help us to a better understanding of the origin and
function of art in the life of mankind.
In Ida's case, art seems to have been her salva-
tion. I advised her parents to encourage and guide
the spontaneous sublimation, although I hardly ex-
pected that this would suffice. I saw Ida again six
months later. She had been resolutely and exclu-
sively influenced in the direction of her art, and had
shown that she possessed real talent. Her mental
troubles had vanished. Her bodily development,
which had been for some time arrested, had now
taken such a stride that I hardly recognised her.
388 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
3, Adam
Sublimation in Danger
The phenomenon I am now about to describe is
far from rare, but I cannot deny myself the pleas-
ure of recording a dream in which this phenomenon
is expressed by a peculiarly apt symbol. It relates
to the feeling that a sublimation (the religious subli-
mation in this case) is imperilled by the urge of the
crude instinct upon which the sublimation is based.
We have already encountered the phenomenon in
the analysis of one of our adolescent subjects,
Gerard. For practical purposes, we are dealing
with the old conflict between the ** spirit'' and the
**flesh" under one of its most distressing aspects.
There is no occasion to give a detailed analysis.
Suffice it to note a few of the traits which will con-
vey a sketch of the individuality with which we are
concerned.
Adam complains of deficient mental concentration,
and of difficulties in the sphere of action, of a lack
of amiability. He finds it very difficult to argue,
even in defence of ideas to which he is devoted.
Maladaptation to social life, introversion, are obvi-
ous. Aged twenty-seven, he has had no experience
of sexual intercourse. A divinity student, he is
one of those men in whom moral elevation is tinged
with austerity. He is aware of this austerity, re-
gards it as a fault, and would like to correct it.
The analysis will help him to do so.
SUBLIMATIONS 389
Here are some free associations, by which is meant
associations that do not have as their starting point
a dream or reminiscence, but such as arise when
isolated words are uttered. These associations,
which were noted at Adam's first sitting, immedi-
ately disclosed certain cardinal points.
I. The subject thinks of a ** statue of Justice" on
a fountain in Berne ; the eyes of the figure of Justice
are bandaged. This image is associated with a mem-
ory of ''the Bear Pit."
Asked for associations to **eyes bandaged,*' the
subject recalls a scene from childhood. His brother
and he, before going to sleep, used to amuse them-
selves by jumping from bed to bed ; one evening the
brother fell and cut his forehead. '* Change of
beds" called up the wish to leave home, *^to be no
longer dependent on my father." To the words
**cut his forehead" came the memory of another
romp when he had wounded himself in like fashion
*^ trying to hide." In another association, he re-
membered how a bee had stung him on the eyelid.
*^They tied up my eye." Now, *^ bandaged eye"
which had thus appeared for the second time, gave
fresh associations. He has eye trouble; an oculist
whom he consulted thought it might be due to mas-
turbation. The words ^*hide oneself," which had
originally appeared on the scene in connection with
the cut forehead, called up **the shamefulness of
masturbation. ' '
To the word ** mother," Adam answered that he
390 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
had been very fond of his mother, and that up to the
age of ten he had told her everything. To the word
^* father," he said: ^'Disagreeable memories.'* He
added that his father was ** despotic'' towards wife
and family: **We were all afraid of him."
II. A ha^ sort of place, where he seems to have
been. It was a nine days' journey. — ^Now the image
had cleared up. He recognised the place. There was
a little inn with only one bed. The sheets had not
been changed ; a couple had slept there before him and
had ''made a mess.''
Subsequently, during the analysis of a dream,
Adam produced some remarkable associations apro-
pos of a '^ ravine." They supplement and confirm
the following:
The nine days' journey brought us to the nine
months of pregnancy, and the ''hazy sort of place
where he seems to have been" corresponded to a
fantasy of the return to the mother's w^omb. This
new expression of fixation on the mother was linked
with a disgust for sexuality, which appeared to be
related with impressions received in childhood con-
cerning acts of sexual intercourse by his parents.
It would be superfluous to give further details of
this kind. We have enough to disclose the psycho-
logical type of the subject with whom we are deal-
ing. There is a well-marked Œdipus complex.
Sexuality has been repressed, but a strong feeling
of remorse attends the memory of certain sins of
adolescence, which the subject considers to be the
SUBLIMATIONS 391
cause of his extant inferiority. He regards the lat-
ter as a just punishment for sin, and this to him is
the significance of the symbol of Justice ^^with ban-
daged eyes.'' It is just that he should have *^eye
troubles."
Let us pass on to the dream which is especially
worthy of attention. This is a nightmare dating
from adolescence, and which at that epoch Adam was
wont to have every night.
III. He is climbing a mountain. In front of him
is a rock. He wishes to turn back. Behind him he
sees a bear. He throws his arms round the bear and
drags the animal towards a precipice; he and the
bear fall over together, and he awakes.
The ** mountain'' always calls up in his mind ^Hhe
ascent towards the ideal." The ^^rock" makes him
think of three blocks which were found in the earth
when the foundations of a church were being dug.
Quite apart from what we have learned from anal-
ysis in other subjects, the associations to the dreams
of this particular subject lead us to suppose that
the ** three blocks" symbolise the genital organs.
The idea is strikingly confirmed when, speaking of
the three blocks, the subject says :
These stones [they had been disinterred when he
was seventeen years old] were exhibited. ''It was a
pity" that they were exhibited without any explana-
tion.
A moment later, and not in any conscious rela-
tionship to what had gone before, he went on :
392 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
*'It was a pity" that I was not told anything about
sexual matters.
. As for the **bear," this calls up the ^'Bear Pif
at Berne. We already know that this Bear Pit is
in its turn associated with ** Justice with bandaged
eyes.'' But we do not need to draw inferences; the
subject does this for himself, and without even pass-
ing by way of the figure of ^ ' Justice with bandaged
eyes.'' The struggle with the bear calls up without
transition, though he does not know wherefore, **the
struggle with masturbation."
Thus the interpretation of the dream is quite sim-
ple. As he is on his way up the mountain, the
subject encounters an obstacle (the rock), sexuality;
wishing to avoid this he rediscovers it in another
form (the bear), masturbation. Struggling with the
bear, he falls into the abyss. This nightmare, which
dates from the period of his preparation for the re-
ligious life, expresses the anguish of sin, the dread
of having his upward progress arrested, the fear of
ruining the incipient sublimation. The symbolism
grows still more striking when we consider the
** three blocks." The church which is to be built
must have its foundations in the ground where the
three blocks are; but the blocks are in the way of
the foundations. Could there be a better expression
of the view that the budding sublimation (the church
in course of construction) is rooted in the very soil
where the crude instinct was slumbering, and that
this is why the instinct is so dangerous to the subli-
mation?
SUBLIMATIONS 393
4. Jecmne
Non-Acceptance of Maebiage. Thwarted Matep-
NAL Instinct. Vacillating Sublimation.
Jeanne belongs to a type we are familiar with.
We have seen it in embryo in the little girls Linette
and Mireille ; in a fully developed form, in the young
woman Kitty; and in a pathological variant, in
Eenée, a woman in her prime. Jeanne exhibits fixa-
tion upon the mother, some degree of refusal of
femininity, and a few virile character traits.
It would seem that in her case the negative aspect
of the complex is more conspicuous than the posi-
tive. Infantile hostility towards the tather is more
marked than fixation upon the mother. When she
was a child, she thought her father ^^ugly." She
was ** afraid of his eyes.'' At the age of eight she
admired him, for he regarded her as clever. Sub-
sequently, however, he was fond of saying that
''there was no need for her to study, since she was
only a woman." This aroused a spirit of revolt.
Afterwards she was educated by her mother, away
from the father. Her mother read Victor Hugo to
her, and awakened in her a taste for art. The
father cared only for his son, and, quite under the
influence of the ancient prejudice, made an exclusive
favourite of this heir of his name. Jeanne made
common cause with her mother, and took up the
cudgels on behalf of her sister against her father
and her brother. Predisposed by this attitude, she
then adopted feminist views.
394 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Slie herself declared that in her most instinctive
and ^'primitive'' nature there was ^* something mas-
culine, something combative, something pugnacious."
Though married, she has never really accepted mar-
riage. She says she consented to be married as a
refuge, from ^^ dread of life" from fear that she
might have a love affair of which her parents would
disapprove. At the very time when she was about
to marry, she said : * * I would much rather marry a
woman than a man. ' '
The marriage was unhappy. At the date of the
analysis, Jeanne was thirty-one. She had been
divorced for a year. During her marriage she suf-
fered both physically and morally. About seven
years ago she had begun to have a nightmare, which
had frequently recurred.
I. She had lost her wedding-ring. She awoke with
a start.
As is often the case, the symbol of losing the wed-
ding-ring already implied the desire for a rupture
of relations; however, in the earlier days of this
nightmare, Jeanne used to find the lost ring. Later
there was a modification in the dream, for she did
not succeed in finding the lost ring. Towards the
close of her life with her husband, she suffered for
a time from syphilophobia, having a fixed idea that
she had been infected by the husband. Happily this
was no more than a delusion, and the conviction that
she had been mistaken mitigated, though it did not
entirely relieve, the jarring of the nerves which had
SUBLIMATIONS 395
been caused by the disputes and miseries of the last
years of her wedded life.
Here are some reminiscences of childhood which
will enable us to understand Jeanne's personality.
II. Jeanne was not yet three years old. She had
run away from home on an exploring expedition, carry-
ing a stick. She went down to the sea shore, and
then she did not know where else to go. It was
there that she was found.
"Eunning away" called up in Jeanne's mind *Ho
get free.'' Asked for an association to the word
^'home," she said that that day she ^'had run away
from her mother," and that subsequently she had
wanted to ^'free herself from the spell of her
mother." The mother, *^ though gentle and affec-
tionate, made me fell that my will was paralysed."
Would it not have been more accurate to say, '^ be-
cause gentle and affectionate"? Here we have a
case in which it is obvious that the subconscious fixa-
tion upon one of the parents must not be regarded as
synonymous with attachment in the comprehensive
sense of that term. A subject may suffer on account
of such a fixation, may protest against it, and may
wish to be free from it. Eepulsed by the father, and
eager to throw off the *' mother's spell," Jeanne
gained an insurgent and independent character.
Asked for associations to ** exploring, " she said:
* ^ Inquisitive eagerness to know, to touch, and to
see." It is the forbidden fruit; it is a positive
396 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
effort to break away from the mother, an effort which
reminds us of the cases of Linette and Mireille.
The explorer with a stick in the hand tad been seen
by the child in the form of an Epinal plaster cast,
and she wanted to imitate what she had seen. Hence-
forward she assumes a virile attitude. Life on the
sea shore is for Jeanne a free life, instinctive, the
life of the wild. To her the ^^instinctive" and the
*^wild" always connote the idea of ** masculine."
^*She did not know where else to go.^' She gave
me details of her feeling in this respect. First of
all she found it pleasant to stay by the sea ; then she
felt rather lost, for there was ^^no one to give me
a hand." This brought us to her present derelict
condition, to the lack of a guide after the disillusion-
ment of marriage. Then came the associations,
**cut" and ** broken," which had already appeared
several times apropos of her divorce.
This reminiscence, the earliest incident she can
remember, is what anyone's earliest reminiscence is
apt to be.^ By condensation it has become a sketch
of the subject's character, and an epitome of her
history.
Here is another reminiscence, no less typical.
III. An accident. — Jeanne was with a little boy
who, like herself, was from five and a half to six years
old. It was on the sea shore, and there was a tub full
^ Cf. Bovet's analysis of Tolstoy's earliest memory and of the
two earliest memories of L. Artus-Perrelet, in the preface to
Artus-Perrelet, Le dessin au service de l'éducation.
SUBLIMATIONS 397
of water in which the two children were sailing boats.
Jeanne fell into the tub. She remembered the story
of a little girl who, having tumbled into the water,
kicked off from the bottom in order to rise to the
surface. She did the same; the little boy seized her,
and called for help.
It is interesting to note how this reminiscence is
in line with some of the dreams of Linette and
Mireille, dreams of accidents, and especially of im-
mersions: an accident following an attempt to get
away from the mother, to touch the forbidden fruit,
and especially at the close of a romp with some little
boys (Linette, dream V; Mireille, dream III). The
reminiscence is so remarkably persistent because of
its connection with a frequent symbol.
But the fixity of the reminiscence is increased
because of condensation with a recent ^'accident,''
that of marriage. One day Jeanne's mother had
told the little boy that he would be Jeanne's hus-
band. The little boy took the thing quite seriously,
and made presents to Jeanne. She ^'detested him,*'
but did not dare to say anything, believing her fate
to be sealed. Here w^e have the same passivity as
that which she was to exhibit later, when submitting
to a marriage which inwardly she repudiated. The
*^tub'' gave as associations ** something dirty,''
* * repugnance, " a * ^ dead animal. ' ' Putting all these
things together, we see that underlying them is a
disgust for sexuality. The kick-off from the bottom
of the water calls up the words *^ anger" and ** re-
sistance." Here we have the buoyancy of a nature
398 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
fundamentally energetic, one familiar with revolt;
we have a determination not to give in. The whole
reminiscence is in conformity with Jeanne's present
situation.
The closing words *^ called for help" were asso-
ciated in Jeanne's mind with certain nightmares in
which she had a sense of powerlessness and from
which she ** awoke screaming.'' Especially, she
mentioned the following recent nightmare :
IV. She was in bed; someone approached with, a
knife. She was awakened by her own ''screaming."
The associations showed plainly that the dream
expressed the fear and disgust inspired by sexu-
ality, and that these feelings were linked with the
subject's hostility to the father.
Here are the associations :
Knife. Dread of knives. Something cold. Cold
water [compare this with the ''tub" in III]. Tools,
a saw, a plane. At sight of these tools, Jeanne felt as
if they were being used on her.
Screaming. Sore throat, hoarseness. Ungovernable
fits of passion in childhood when Jeanne had screamed
at the top of her voice. Her father had wanted to
make her eat an undercooked egg in which the white
had not set ; it was then she had screamed like this.
Undercooked egg in wJiicJi the white had not set.
Disgusting. Feeling sick. Nausea induced by mis-
interpretations of innocent feelings. Jeanne's sister
had been passionately fond of a young aunt. Some-
one had regarded this fondness as a sign of perver-
sion.
SUBLIMATIONS 39d
To everyone familiar with the practice of psycho-
analysis, the sexual allusions in these associations
are obvious. Indeed, they can hardly be overlooked
even by those unfamiliar with the method. Com-
ment is superfluous, but it may be useful to compare
Jeanne's associations with some of those of Renée
or of Mireille. More especially we should compare
the disgust inspired by the imperfectly cooked white
of egg which her father compels her to eat, with the
disgust inspired in Renée by the father's expectora-
tion (Renée, V). We are also reminded of the sym-
bol ''white of egg^^ in one of Mireille 's dreams
(Mireille, VIII).
The voice which grows ''hoarse'* (masculine)
through screaming in anger against the father, and
the concluding allusion to homosexuality, underline
the fact that Jeanne's virile attitude is linked with
protest against the father and against sexuality.
Here is a dream which gives us some precise de-
tails. May we say numerical details! Anyhow it
was of a strange form, and is worth noting on its
own account.
V. [Overnight, Jeanne had been reading a Pytha-
gorean work on ''Numbers."] She saw herself on the
top of a hill. Her parents were represented by the
figure 2; she herself, her sister, and her brother, by
the figure 3. There were 10 boys and 12 girls ar-
ranged in order of height like Pan-pipes. Her father
said something about lorgnettes — 15 or 17. — She took
one and saw a courtyard with a seething mass of a
striped grey colour. There were 80 cats. She saw
400 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
a scriptural town with a tower shaped like a truncated
oval cone. On the tower were a dead elephant, a dead
tiger, and a wounded white bear with which her father
was fighting. Her father killed the bear and said they
must get into the tower to shelter there from the cave-
lion. . . . There were arabesques on the tower, bright
blue and yellow '^primary colours." — They took
refuge in the tower ; in it there was a square hall where
there was a wedding breakfast in progress; the bride
was like Jeanne's sister. She was listening through a
microphone to her * * fiancé ' ' who was in the next room.
In the middle there was a table with 32 children, all
children up to 16. One child of 16 w£ls complaining
at not having been seated among the grown-ups, for
it was bored. Everything was arranged in a gradu-
ated series like Pan-pipes, except for the cats, which
were in a heap.
The tower and the wedding breakfast symbolise
marriage. This interpretation was confirmed by a
number of allusions and associations. We can un-
derstand, therefore, why the tower was ' * truncated. ' '
To this word came as associations ''brcfken'' and
** smashed," which represent divorce. The cats
were ^*a crowd of cats attracted by a she-cat." As
for the wild beasts, these called up in Jeanne ^*the
wild and masculine instincts" of her nature. Once
more these instincts showed themselves to be en-
gaged in a struggle with the father. The latter says
that they must *^take refuge" in the tower. We
know that Jeanne agreed to marriage as a ** refuge."
But this marriage was never really accepted. That
is why the bridegroom is degraded into a ** fiancé,"
SUBLIMATIONS 401
is sent into the *^next room," and is listened to
through the ^^ microphone/'
Jeanne recalls that the number **2,'' which in the
dream represents her parents, signifies in *' Pytha-
goras-' ^'antagonism." She has always regarded
*'10" as beautiful and complete; 10 was her age
when she made her first communion. The age of
**12" is one of liberty, nature, instinctive life. There
are *'10 boys and 12 girls," because at the age of
10 she was still quite a child, sexless or rather boy-
ish, but at the age of 12 she began to feel like a
girl. There is the same contrast, but more sharply
marked, between *'15 and 17." This is a '^critical
age." The 'lorgnettes" associated with these
numbers, the lorgnettes given by the father, and
used in order to look at the "mass of cats," are an
obvious sexual allusion. At the age of 15, Jeanne
was "like a boy." But the era of conflicts was be-
ginning. As far as she can remember, 15 in
"Pythagoras" is simultaneously "the Ascension"
and the ' ' spirit of evil. ' ' At the age of 16 she was
sentimental, and passed through a neurasthenic
phase (this is why, in the dream, the child of 16 is
bored). At the age of 17 she "forced" herself to
be cheerful. She began to live the life of a woman.
At that age, making an etïort to satisfy her mother,
she became "superficial, worldly, and well-bred."
She had "a loud, grating, forced laugh, which people
commented on." By an auditory association, the
number 15 called up the tinkling of a bell from a
Christmas tree. She had had it when she was a
child ; had been very fond of it, and had been greatly
402 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
distressed when it was broken. The tone of this
bell, thus associated with memories of the fifteenth
year, was deep, not loud, and it contrasted with the
grating laugh of her seventeenth year. Her present
age is ^'32." She thinks that between the ages of
17 and 32 her life was on the wrong track. But 32,
in ** Pythagoras,'' signifies ** wisdom."
In fact, at the present time, she considers that she
has pulled herself together, that she has become
aware of her true instincts, is cultivating them by
sublimation, and is thus attaining wisdom. She has
artistic occupations, social and metaphysical aspira-
tions. She is interested in theosophy; that is why
she has been reading ^ * Pythagoras. ' '
Inasmuch as *Hhe tower has been truncated,'' the
aspiration towards human love has been repressed.
Absorbed in new interests, Jeanne renounces all
thought of the life of feeling. She says: **The
feeling of love — I shouldn't know what to make of
it now." Nevertheless, the repressed emotion de-
livers its assault subconsciously ; all the more vigor-
ously, doubtless, because (as in Gerard's case) her
mind is vacillating between alternative paths of
sublimation.
One of her dreams gives a faithful picture of a
nature-man who reenters by the window.
VI. A man [who in real life is on the point of being
divorced] enters by the window wearing the uniform
of a colonel in the Chasseurs d'Afrique. She recog-
nises his apelike forehead.
SUBLIMATIONS 403
The man in tlie case is obviously a substitute for
the husband. *^ Enters by the window" calls up as
an association **turn out through the door."
In a fantasy during the waking state there ap-
pears a ^^ squeaking door." The associations are:
VII. Boor. A door which is no longer of any use.
Squeaking. The revolt of the bodily nature against
pain.
The following dream is extremely vivid:
VIII. A male being. — A courtyard, small trees, and
a great shadow like that of a huge, unseen tree.
To the man vaguely present, Jeanne showed an
oblong flower-stand filled with very dry sand, in which,
however, some shoots of asparagus were sprouting.
It also contained a little cutting from a tree, a cutting
no thicker than the finger. She was amazed to see
that this was sprouting. She had cut the plants down,
believing that they were done with. She was aston-
ished to find that this little cutting had such big roots.
She planted it out again in a flower-pot which the male
being handed her.
The scene recalled one with which she was ac-
quainted in real life ; the courtyard was raised upon
a conical-shaped construction, truncated. This is
akin to the tower of dream V. The shape of the
oblong flower-stand likewise recalls the tower. This
oblong shape, that of the ^gg and likewise that of
the ovary, is not infrequent in such dreams. The
cutting is the corresponding male symbol. [The
40é STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
word * tronçon, '^ cutting, is kindred in sound and
significance to ** tronqué.''] ** Cutting*' calls up
'*cut last year" — tlie year of the divorce. The
flower-stand calls up ^^a commonplace affair, a
flower-stand which Father gave to Mother, one with
artificial flowers ; I admired it, but at the same time
I thought it stupid." Apropos of **very dry sand,"
she thought of **a marriage which was not able to
become fruitful." Apropos of the plants which she
had thought **done with," she said that of late she
had been inclined **to think everything done with."
This dream also aroused memories dating from her
twelfth year, the period when Jeanne had '^broken
away from her father," and had risen against him
**as every woman rises against every man." The
dream contains a condensation of the old-time
*' breaking away" from the father with the recent
divorce. It is the integral repression, both in its
primal cause and in its immediate determinant. But
the repressed instinct has not been annihilated.
Jeanne explicitly repudiates this instinct, and
** would not know what to make of the feeling of
love." Nevertheless, the sprouting is a renascence.
It would, of course, be a mistake to interpret this
dream as sexual in the narrower sense of the term,
though we might plausibly thus interpret dream VI.
For dream VIII, a more widely conceived interpreta-
tion is requisite. In it we have a fantasy of fecun-
dity, in conformity with the wishes Jeanne now
feels to **make her life fruitful" with fecund activ-
ities. ' * She had thought everything was done with, ' '
and she is being reborn into life. She gladly accepts
SUBLIMATIONS 405
the idea to which the analysis is leading us, that,
instead of trying to ignore her instincts, she must
become fully conscious of them, so as to establish
thereon a sublimation which shall not be founded
upon repressions or built over a volcano.
The idea of fecundity leads us to another instinct,
thwarted if not repressed — the maternal instinct.
This also is in search of a happy derivation, a spirit-
ualisation. The literary and artistic works in which
Jeanne seeks self-expression manifest the fact
clearly. The motif of the mother and child is pre-
ponderant. In one of her imaginative writings, she
says that she presses her art to her bosom as a
mother presses her child.
Moreover, Jeanne's ** masculine'' trends have not
been repudiated. Will they undergo sublimation in
the choice of an artistic career of a kind usually
reserved for men? Such a choice would, indeed, be
an effective protest against a father who said that
study was needless for a woman. Or shall we find
a more active type of sublimation — perhaps social
work of a feminist character? In these respects we
discern a conflict, or at any rate a vacillation, which
is disclosed in the following dream.
IX. Jeanne is in an under^ound passage. . . .
Above is a flooring surmounted by rooms. She sud-
denly remembers that in one of these upper rooms a
woman is imprisoned, a prostitute, a spy, and a thief,
sentenced to be shot. Jeanne recalls having seen her
at the trial, having noted her impassioned expression
and her pale face. Jeanne said to herself: **It is not
406 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the woman whom I wish to save, but her min(3, so that
she may learn the value of her suffering and her life. ' '
Jeanne wanted to bribe the warder and the general.
She got permission to enter the woman's room to
make a portrait of her, but was not allowed to talk to
her. Suddenly Jeanne realised that this woman was
feeling sympathetic towards her. When Jeanne was
leaving the cell, the woman silently slipped an emerald
ring on to the visitor's finger. Then the woman tried
to sell her some jewels; she talked superficially, and
Jeanne said to herself: ''All the same, there's a lot of
good in her. ' ' — Blows on the flooring were now heard.
Jeane knew it was a bust being broken. Half awake,
she said to herself: ^'Someone has discovered that I
have a duty towards women, and someone has broken
this bust." SameoTie, in her thought, was an occult
force.
The ^* underground passage'' recalled to Jeanne
reminiscences of her ninth year, reminiscences of
her ''explorations" in dark corners. The impris-
oned woman has many traits which show that she
symbolises Jeanne herself. The ** general" and the
futilities about the jewels and the words of the pris-
oner, are linked with reminiscences of Jeanne's sev-
enteenth year (see commentary on dream V), and
of the worldly and superficial life which Jeanne
found so repugnant. On the other hand, the im-
prisoned woman is also woman in general^ under the
conditions of slavery and futility imposed by society.
By working to set woman free, Jeanne will set herself
free; that is to say, she will provide a pleasant and
useful outlet for her tendencies towards virility (ex-
SUBLIMATIONS 407
ploration) and towards protest against the father
(the general). The fact that in the dream she is
forbidden to talk to the woman, recalls the difficulty
which she finds, in real life, in getting into touch with
others, the difficulty whereby her social impulses are
paralysed. She cannot openly acknowledge in the
dream that she wants to set the woman free, so she
pretends that she wants to draw the woman's por-
trait. Then, she cannot talk to the prisoner, so is
satisfied with making a picture of her. Here are
two different ways of expressing the same fact, that
art has been for Jeanne a surreptitious method of
realising a tendency to which she could not or dared
not give direct expression. The ^^bust,'* at the close
of the dream, is likewise linked to Jeanne's artistic
work. ** Someone'' breaks the bust because Jeanne
has a duty towards women. This signifies that art,
or at any rate art for art's sake, does not entirely
satisfy her, for fundamentally she is under the in-
fluence of the call of social duty.
But the conflict lying at the root of the trouble
appears in all its complexity in the following dream,
which is full of apt symbols.
X. She is in a great park, damp and gloomy, **at
this season of the year" (autumn). There is a cen-
tury-old house, in the French style, consisting of a
ground floor, and an attic occupying one side only of
the roof. Jeanne is far away. She knew that the
house was occupied by a woman married to the owner
of an ironworks, like the hero of Georges Ohnet 's book,
The Ironmaster. The woman knew her duty but did
408 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
not love her husband. At night, clad in a close-fitting
garment, she left the house by the window. She
strolled in the park, along an alley like the arms of a
cross. She leaned her elbows on a ledge, and looked
down over a luminous lowland. Just below she saw
a pathway which brought back memories of the days
when she was betrothed. She says to herself : * * I have
three windows." She turns and perceives that some-
one is looking at her from within. It is her husband 's
secretary. She loses her self-possession, for she feels
that she has forfeited her good name. She goes up
to the attic and throws herself from the window.
There is a sound of broken glass ; the artery in her left
wrist is cut.
Next, Jeanne sees a pastrycook's where cakes are
displayed upon dirty shelves. A crowd. Jeanne ap-
proaches the injured woman. The husband is there;
he is a doctor. The artery cannot be tied, the woman
is mad. She wants to rise. Her husband says: *^It
doesn't matter, seeing that she's lost."
Next Jeanne is taking a walk with two children.
She goes with them into a wood. They gather cycla-
mens. . . . Again she is in the house. Jeanne herself
is the invalid. Someone says: ''You no longer treat
this from the chest, but from the back." They place
a mustard plaster on Jeanne's back and her reason is
restored.
The words *^at this season of the year" doubtless
serve to emphasise the fact that the dream relates
to the present state of Jeanne's crisis, whereas
* * century-old house ' * reminds us that the root-causes
of the crisis date back many years. The park re-
calls the nineteenth year of Jeanne's age, when she
SUBLIMATIONS 409
underwent a change of personality; it recalls the
tentative efforts at poetical expression which she
made at that time. The house calls up a country
mansion Jeanne had seen that year; it is **a deep,
sincere life'' in revolt against '^the superficial life"
which she had tried to impose upon herself. The
references to her husband need no comment. The
**deep, sincere" life which rebels, is the life which,
even to-day, seeks an outlet, a ** window," in order
that it may become a reality. The '* three windows"
evoke very precise associations. These windows
symbolise certain appropriate exits from the crisis.
There were ^ ' two artificial windows and one natural
window in the forest." The *^ natural window"
symbolises a way out by yielding to brute instinct;
the two ** artificial windows" appear to be the two
sublimations — aesthetic and social — between which
Jeanne is vacillating. The symbol of the * ^ two chil-
dren" stresses the social outlet, an outlet which the
maternal instinct is also seeking. The dream chil-
dren call up by association ''poor children," studies
which Jeanne would like to have undertaken in the
past and which she hopes to undertake now in order
to help children by means of educational work.
The pastrycook's is once more the repulsive aspect
of the sexual instinct (cakes on dirty shelves).
** Loses self-possession," ''cut," "mad" — all refer
to the present crisis, more especially in reference to
the nervous disorders which it is our endeavour to
cure. The final detail — the comparison of the two
treatments — is one of the most delightful. The
treatment "by the chest" calls up the following asso-
410 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
dations: '^reduced the inflammation of the chest,
treat with kindness''; the treatment *^by the back"
calls up ** energy." The significance of the two
^^treatments'' is soon made clear. As usual, I was
treating the subject concurrently by suggestion and
psychoanalysis. While practising the latter, I faced
the subject; for the practice of the former I stood
behind her. During the analysis the subject un-
burdens her heart, reduces the inflammation of the
chest; this is treating with kindness. Suggestion is
more energetic. Jeanne's subconscious informs us
that the main task of the analysis has been accom-
plished; it is now necessary to lay stress upon sug-
gestion. Relieved of the burden of the past, Jeanne
demands that she herself shall be given the strength
to guide her own destinies in the future. To Jeanne,
whose main difficulty now lay in her vacillation be-
tween the two sublimations, this firmness of purpose
seemed far more important than the indefinite pro-
longation of the analysis.
5. Queenie
Fixation upon the Father, esthetic and re-
ligious Sublimation,
Queenie was well aware of her attachment to her
father. Her attachment to him was intensified
when he married again. This marriage took place
when Queenie was three years old. The step-
mother was unkind to the little girl. (Queenie was
nine months old when her mother died.) Her youth
was dominated by two feelings: attachment to the
SUBLIMATIONS 411
father; protest against the step-mother. Certain
actions which had entailed great sacrifices had been
undertaken for one reason only: to give pleasure
to her father ; to fulfil the wishes of the father.
Two, almost identical, memories of childhood,
which Queenie told me at the same sitting, give elo-
quent expression to these two fundamental feelings.
In addition, the two memories show that around
these feelings, other analogous feelings are gathered
by condensation. The analysis shows (nay, it is
fairly obvious while we read the reminiscences) that
the severe mistress becomes hideous through con-
densation with the step-mother; the professor, on
the other hand, ** shaggy rather than attractive,"
is loved because he is the symbol of the father. The
reminiscences are characteristic. Here is the first :
I. I was twelve years old. . . . The mistress did not
like me, and / her less! Why? SucJi things are dif-
ficult to explain. First of all she was ugly, slatternly ;
I loved things that were beautiful; what particularly
haunted me were her eyes ; they were huge, grey eyes,
wicked-looking eyes; with no soul in them for under-
standing children, it seemed to me. She used to get
into towering passions, especially when I did not know
my geography lesson. And then! — oh, then! — seizing
me by the curls which adorned my brow, she shook me
like a plum tree.
I was at that time very delicate and excitable. These
shakings upset me to such a degree that, for some days
after, my head would ache, and every time I saw her
I was seized with a trembling fit. I never wept, but
412 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
remained quiet and docile; this seemed to vex her
more than if I had screamed. No matter how well
I had prepared my lessons, as soon as I was with her
my mind became a blank!
One Saturday morning we were having the geog-
raphy lesson. Miss N. called me to the wall-map ; she
had the ''bad day" expression in her eyes, and her
voice seemed to be like a distant growling of thun-
der ! — * ' Point to Thorberg, ' ' said she. We were learn-
ing about the canton of Berne. Of course I pointed
all wrong. Then she said: ''Tell me, at le£tst, whom
one sends to Thorberg." Whereupon I answered:
"Masters and mistresses." Tableau! It was a re-
formatory at that date! Apparently I have always
had a talent for repartee, and have often made people
laugh; but under the circumstances I can assure you
Miss N. did not look upon my answer as funny at
all. . . . Raging, scarlet in the face, her eyes starting
from her head, she seized me by my hair. Not satis-
fied with pulling the curls on my forehead, she laid
hold of the bunch that fell over my shoulders as well.
Then I had a time of it! Shaken, cuffed, abused!
Hell, if it exists, could not be worse. I saw sparks;
I heard the thunder of her hateful voice. Goodness,
how dreadful she was when thus let loose! In my
heart of Jiearts I placed Iter alongside my step-motJier,
and found my schoolmistress as horrible as I found her,
and God knows I did not love my step-mother. This
was the refrain Miss N. repeated again and again:
*'Ah! So! That's where you send schoolmistresses,
is it; thanks; take that, and that; that'U teach you!"
After the lesson, all the children followed me out
of the class room. They gathered round me and tried
to cheer me up. "You did jolly well to send her to
SUBLIMATIONS 413
Thorberg ; it serves her right ! Don 't cry ; don 't cry ! ' '
The tears I had withheld in her presence now
coursed down my cheeks, and I began to feel calmer.
From the very outset, the part played by the sub-
conscious in her dislike for the mistress is well
marked in this reminiscence. **The mistress did not
like me, and I her less.'^ That is to say, the child's
dislike was not wholly/ justified by the character of
the teacher. The following sentence is even more
expressive. ^^Why! Such things are difficult to ex-
plain." Conscious reasons do not suffice, even in
the subject's mind, to explain the aversion. There
is something deeper, whose existence she merely
surmises. But in the course of the narrative she
answers her own question, without realising she is
doing so, and quite incidentally. ^^In my heart of
hearts I placed her alongside my step-mother.''
May we not smile at the monstrous dimensions this
person is assuming in the child's imagination (see-
ing sparks, hearing thunder), and at the close re-
semblance with the ^Svicked step-mother" of the
fairy tale! — Let us pass on to the second reminis-
cence, which forms the counterpart to the first.
II. Our professor was a dear old fellow. He was a
man of at least sixty summers. Though a trifle rough
in manner, and sliaggy ratlier than attractive, he was
fundamentally good and honest, a man of sterling
worth. He never showed any favouritism (as is so
often the case with teachers) to pupils who were
wealthier or more beautiful than the others. No; as
I said before, he was just, simple, and honest ; I found
414 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
this much to my taste. Consequently, I grew very
fond of Mm from the first. I made good progress
under him, even in geography, and we became excel-
lent friends. Besides he was father^ s friend and this
alone would have been enough to make me like him.
I was rather prone to take journeys to the moon ; too
often, indeed, did my thoughts travel in that direction ;
my old friend was not best pleased at this. I am
sorry now that I allowed myself to dwell so often in
the moon instead of paying heed to his lessons! It
must have tired him to be constantly dragging me
back to earth; still, he never got angry with me!
One afternoon, also during the geography lesson —
but with him how good and wholesome the subject be-
came!— he was explaining about volcanoes. We had
our atlases upon our desks and were listening — ^but
not all of us were listening, for I was away in the
moon!
Following the course of a river with my finger, I
saw mountains ; farther on came the sea — the wide sea,
boundless ; how calm the sea must be at this moment !
From time to time vague words beat upon my ears,
far-away phrases ; but the ocean with its vessels, how
much more beautiful!
Suddenly the voice of the professor broke in defi-
nitely upon my dreaming: **Aha! Queenie, I Ve caught
you! What have I just been explaining?" I rose;
I tried to gather my wits (he had said something about
Popocatepetl, Orizaba, JoruUa). I answered: ^'Popo
. . . caca . . . pépé." — There followed a burst of
laughter. The whole class (there were forty of us)
was in an uproar of mirth. The professor himself was
rocking with laughter, and I joined in as well. I can
see my dear master, scarlet in the face, standing at
SUBLIMATIONS 415
his desk swaying from side to side as lie laughed, the
slit of his mouth reaching from ear to ear, his big,
round head — he looked just like one of those funny
pictures of the moon. He did not scold me; he did
not punish me. No ; he forgave me at once — and what
an affectionate memory I have of him even to this
day! . . .
The symmetrical contrast of these two reminis-
cences is very striking; it extends into every detail.
In the first reminiscence we have the following fact
finding expression: conscious reasons do not fully
account for the antipathy; this is followed by a
reference to the step-mother. In the second, we
have, first of all, an enumeration of personal traits
which are not calculated to attract us to the profes-
sor; this is followed by an allusion to the father.
**He was father's friend, and this alone would have
been enough to make me like him." Then the two
episodes are replicas one of the other in every de-
tail: each time we have an unsuitable answer to a
question during a geography lesson — the first time
the answer is followed by an insensate fit of anger
on the part of the mistress; the second time the
answer is followed by the indulgent mirth of the
professor.
The condensation of the father into the professor
is confirmed by the importance Queenie attaches to
the fact that the master was **just.'' This ^^ jus-
tice" in the character is intimately linked, for
Queenie, with the memory of her father.
We need not dwell any longer upon the analysis
of these two reminiscences. They were adduced
416 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
mainly in order to show the type to which Queenie
belongs; to indicate her exclusive attachment to the
father. But the reminiscences do not help us to
elucidate the trend of the sublimation.
The points we must bear in mind are the follow-
ing: the fascination exercised upon the subject by
imaginative excursions during the professor's les-
son— the imagination escapes in order to wander
over the sea, so boundless and so calm; the recur-
rence, twice, of the symbol *^ being in the moon"
to describe escape into the fields of imagination,
and the recurrence of the **moon" symbol in refer-
ence to the master (the father) : *'He looked just
like . . . the moon." This juxtaposition illustrates
in an original manner a fact which the subsequent
analysis is to verify, and which finds its counter-
part in many other female subjects (Miriam, for
instance), namely: the link that exists between fix-
ation upon the father and sublimation. At the date
when the incidents occurred, this sublimation found
vent in fantasy, the germ of a subsequent aesthetic
sublimation.
This aesthetic trend, linked as it is to the father,
is naturally in opposition to the step-mother. The
opposition is found in a sentence which occurs in
the first reminiscence: ** First of all, she was ugly,
slatternly; I loved things that were beautiful."
Queenie was already aware, in adolescence, of a de-
sire to develop her artistic talents in imitation of
her real mother, who was an artist, but whom she
had never known; the devotion to the memory of
the real mother is another form of protest against
SUBLIMATIONS 417
the step-mother. There may even be detected a
wish to resemble the father's first wife, to excel the
second wife, and thus to supplant the latter in her
father's affections.
At the date of the analysis, Queenie was forty-
one years of age. She married very young; she is
the mother of several children. She complains of
extreme nervous irritability and accesses of neuras-
thenia.
III. In a dream which she has at this date, she sees
a person who is ' ' Molière " ; he gives her prescriptions
which will cure her. The room where he receives her
is like the one where I have my sittings with her.
** Molière'' produces the following associations:
**the arts; nothing is more beautiful." In this
dream, Molière appears as the condensation of my-
self with an idealised ^* artist" and probably with
the father likewise. Molière is at one and the same
time the guide, the healer, and the artist. In this
dream, the subject herself suggests art as a means
to health. Fixation upon the father has been, in
conjunction with a refusal (more or less pro-
nounced) to accept reality, transmuted into an aes-
thetic trend which must find expression.
But Queenie has never been able wholly to satisfy
her artistic trends. She would have liked to con-
tinue her studies ; she had had to interrupt them ' ^ on
account of her father." After her marriage,
conditions were unfavourable to her aesthetic
418 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
development. She suffers from repression of the
sublimated tendency (the aesthetic tendency). The
repressed tendency causes trouble, and endeavours
to find an outlet in other forms of sublimation.
During recent years Queenie has, in fact, set her
course towards religious, charitable, and social
work, which she endeavours to adapt to her taste
for beautiful things. She is still groping her way
along this path of sublimation; the analysis is cast-
ing a ray of light upon the path ; while the analysis
is in progress she has a beautiful dream. The
dream moves her profoundly, and she seems to per-
ceive in it a solution to her troubles.
IV. Early spring; a rapturous morning; a morn-
ing of mornings ; the air is fresh, everything seems to
smile, to be born again on the earth.
From my balcony I suddenly behold a procession
similar to the one which takes place at the Promo-
tions.^
First of all come men walking two abreast ; they are
wearing dress suits, are bare-headed, and have huge
white sashes with golden fringes; these were artists
with long, black locks which they tossed from their
foreheads in a free-and-easy manner.
The first (though I had never seen him before in
real life) I knew to be Jaques Dalcroze; then came
a brass band, and then a great number of girls dressed
in white, garlanded with flowers, happy to be alive.
Near by, buried among trees, was a boarding-school ;
here, on the steps of a wide entrance, was a concourse
of young folk, miracles of beauty, surrounded with a
^ The "Promotions" is the name given to the fête which is held
in Latin Switzerland on the occasion of the distribution of prizes.
SUBLIMATIONS 419
glory of sunlight; they were about to join the proces-
sion.
No sound broke the exquisite silence ; all was peace-
ful, quiet, restful.
Suddenly the voices of the artists broke in upon my
ears. Was it a hymn of praise to the Creator? It
was stately and pure; the voices were beautiful; how
they rose directly from the hearts of those men up to
God!
Reverently, I listen to the divine music; my eyes
filled with tears. All at once a mysterious voice pro-
nounces the word; '* Tolstoy."
The whole dream is permeated with a love of
beauty which towards the close is changed into re-
ligious ecstasy. It seems obvious that the first part
must be a fantasy of virginity ; the associations con-
firm this supposition. We need not be surprised
to find such a fantasy in a woman who, as in this
instance, presents a case of strong fixation upon the
father. This fixation gives rise to certain regres-
sive tendencies which are symbolised by the **board-
ing-schooP' (return to adolescence) and by the
*' Promotions'' (return to childhood).
The *^ artists'* play the same part as *' Molière"
did in dream III. The name ^'Jaques Dalcroze"
is partly due to a confusion which often occurs at
Geneva between the ^^ Institut de Eythmique Jaques
Dalcroze" and the ^* Institut Jean Jacques Eous-
sean" where I received Queenie for treatment.
The condensation of the ''artist" in the dream with
myself (as in the case of ''Molière" in the previous
dream) is now confirmed.
420 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
But the ** artists'' in No. IV, in their formal
clothes, have something of the priest about them;
they sing a hymn to ^^the Creator" and the name
of Tolstoy seems to break in as an answer to this
religious aspiration. Tolstoy's thoughts on re-
ligious and social affairs respond to Queenie's own
aspirations. The fact that Tolstoy secured this re-
ligious and social sublimation after passing through
a stage of aesthetic sublimation, squares with the
actual process of Queenie's development. ''Tol-
stoy" calls up the following associations: ''Christ;
justice": which is followed by the very pertinent
observation: "For me, Christ, Tolstoy, and my
father, are three identicals." We seem to catch
the "paternal imago" in the act! It is upon the
paternal imago that Queenie models the idea in
which she is about to find health and harmony.
1
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SEAKCH FOR A GUIDE
In the person of the analyst, the subject seeks for
a guide — if not a saviour 1 Sometimes the search is
an ardent one ; in such an event the search may as-
sume an ^ infantile'' and *^ erotic'' form in relation
to the analyst; this ^'infantile'' and ^* erotic'' atti-
tude is apt to be subconscious. At the close of
Chapter Four (pp. 113-116) we examined the ** af-
fective transference on to the analyst."
This passionate search for a guide does not al-
ways progress smoothly, but has crises of hostility
which are no less passionate than the search. In
fact, the attitude of the subject towards the analyst
is usually hostile at the outset. The hostility is in
most cases subconscious. Gradually, however, the
subject feels himself to be the victor or the van-
quished. Rynaldo exhibits a very precise evolution
of transference; it conforms to type; at first the
subject disparages the analyst and spares him no
contumely; then the subject showers upon the an-
alyst all sorts of feelings, partly filial, partly erotic,
partly homosexual. As soon as a sympathetic link
has been established, progress towards cure begins ;
the moment when the link is finally broken, and
when the subject becomes once again his own mas-
ter, is the moment when the cure is completed. One
of the interesting aspects of Rynaldo 's case is the
421
422 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
original and picturesque phraseology he uses in
order to express his feelings towards the analyst.
In Stella, the idea of the guide develops in the
direction of sublimation; the subject decides to find
the guide within herself. In such a case the rôle
of the analyst is that of helper, which may for a
moment be confounded with the rôle of ideal guide,
but which quickly becomes dissociated from such a
conception. In Stella's case the guide takes the
form of a spiritual principle ; we saw a rudiment of
this phenomenon in Euth. Such a principle, whether
it be philosophical or religious, must always be re-
spected by the analyst, no matter what his personal
contactions are. All the more must he do so, seeing
that his own task is thus made easier.
In every case the analyst must guard against ex-
ercising any excessive influence either upon the
feelings or upon the conscience of the subject. He
must always aim at making the subject master of
himself. And it is here that suggestion, or rather
autosuggestive education of the subject, plays an
obvious part.
1. Bynaldo
Change of Analyst. From Hostility to Sympathy.
This analysis was begun by my pupil and friend
Monsieur Soteriou (of Athens). When he left
Switzerland, he passed the case on to me and gave
me the following information:
Eynaldo, thirty-nine years old, house painter,
Italian, fairly cultured, a lover of music and of
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 423
opera, came to Soteriou in a condition of severe
neurasthenia. He slept badly, had a poor appetite,
no pleasure in living, was haunted by thoughts of
death. A fixed idea that his *^ flesh is drying up."
The subject lives with his mother, and is obsessed
with the idea that his mother is going to die. Mas-
turbation was practised from the age of seven to
thirty-five years of age. Neurasthenia has been
present for many years, during the course of which
the subject has had several acute exacerbations.
Analysis revealed a strong fixation upon the
mother, and homosexual tendencies. There is a
marked need to cling to someone, and hence the
affective transference on to the analyst was of ex-
treme importance. Some years ago, Rynaldo was
troubled by the conviction that he was going mad;
this seems to have arisen in consequence of an unfor-
tunate word spoken by a doctor when Rynaldo was
a child, which reacted upon him by suggestion. The
fixed idea about *^ drying up" had lessened during
the analysis. This was also linked to impressions
during childhood. In those days, Rynaldo had
known a young neuropath whose body ** appeared
to be ** drying up," and whose malady led his
parents to lavish their love upon him.
The main interest for me in the case is the special
importance of the subject's attitude towards the an-
alyst. This importance seems to have been en-
hanced in consequence of the change of analyst:
there appeared to be a sort of crisis of transference,
so that the mechanism underlying the phenomenon
was brought into sharp relief. The acceptance of
424 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
the analyst (wMcli is in no case effected from the
outset) was rendered all the more difficult because
the subject had to be weaned from his previous
analyst.
Another item of special interest in Eynaldo's case
is the symbolical language the subject has created,
more particularly to express his subconscious atti-
tude towards the analyst. It is not the dreams
which give us the greatest help in this analysis, but
the spontaneous associations which surge up ready-
made in the mind of the subject at any moment of
the day, and of which he makes notes. These asso-
ciations are usually of two words, a noun and an
adjective, often very peculiar and with no logical
relationship to one another. Some of the words are
neologisms. — The associations seemed to the sub-
ject absolutely fixed as soon as they occurred to
him; he wrote them down without understanding
them. We have here a slight dissociation of con-
sciousness such as is found among automatic
writers.
I. (From July 4th to July 13th). Here are some
associations showing that the subconscious laughs at
the method or distrusts it : ^
MisleadiDg callisthenics
hjrpnotic gastritis
many too many things at once
^ In these lists, the author's elucidations are in parenthesis and
are italicised. In some instances, the original French term is
appended, in brackets and not italicised. — Translators' Note.
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 425
automatic street-sweeper (autosuggestion) [balayeuse]
improper pruning
tubal story
prodigal auscultation
one-eyed sestheticism
wilful bujffoonery
wilful silence
undeniable drudgery.
Other associations are directed against myself.
The subject is beginning to practise a queer method
of caricature wherein his subconscious will soon ex-
cel. We shall speedily become accustomed to the
fact that he is making merry with my nose and with
my beard ; soon he will laugh at my beard itself, at
the shape of my nose (rhinosceros, rhinoplasty), at
my name (Charles, whence Carolina), at my thick
head of hair (curling-pin), or at my university de-
grees. Let us begin.
Merovingian curling-pin [bigoudi].
^* Merovingian" is reduced by analysis to *'Carlo-
vingian'' (Charles) and to ** Norwegian, " to which
is added the idea of *'old trash." Later on, the
subject compares me to Ibsen (Norwegian) ; I am
for him a barbarian from the north and a ** bearded
symbolist" (discontent at the departure of Soteriou
who is a Greek, and is clean shaven). On the other
hand the *^ curling-pin" is the herald of a series of
symbols whereby the subject, who seems to be an
expert in the use of slang, expresses, with the ut-
most innocence, his belief that I am affected and
426 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
*^ priggish.'' Here are some further pleasantries at
my expense.
Mystical Carolina
advantageous truculence (7 appear to him ''ruddA/
and fresh* ^ and pleased with my own appearance)
reduced swelling [boursouflure]
marked swelling
sensual prig
desired object {the two last associations indicate a
wish for transference, coupled with sexual metaphor)
artificial sweetness
decorated gypsy
symbolical pedant
disguised horse-sbay [berlingot]
ignorant sorcerer
certificated carriage
glutted mercer {associated with sorcerer)
learned crow
bored chatterbox [bavarde]
refreshing sweetmeat
amused sorceress
patented sponger
indiarubber one-eyed man.
We may note in passing that *^ sorceress" is used
elsewhere by the subject with reference to his
mother. This word shows that the whilom subcon-
scious feelings (fixation upon the mother) are en-
deavouring to free themselves by transference on
to the analyst.
Here is a protest against Soteriou who has earned
Rynaldo's displeasure by leaving him in other
hands :
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 427
Dethroned usurper.
** Usurper" because Soteriou was my pupil and
had ^' taken my place." In addition, Soteriou 's
Christian name is Constantine, and Rjmaldo was
comparing him to Constantine, the king of Greece,
who had recently been dethroned.
Here are some allusions to the change of analyst,
a change which had upset the subject:
Sudden change of tack
violent reaction, lively horoscope
complete revolution
displaced balance-sheet
memorandum printed again [bordereau].
In the following there is manifest a slight growth
of confidence in the method and belief in myself :
Well-meant innovation
partial innovation
reinstatement
professional sacrament {iMs equals: professional
secrets are sacred or inviolable)
mathematical invention *
sensible nonsense [baliverne]
margarine and seduction
transcendental ready-reckoner [bareme]
recognised sincerity
recognised system
paternal indulgence
fraudulent inclination {a sign of the transference of
Jiomosexiial tendencies)
428 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
a marchioness in a wig and a silk dress, benevolent
sjTnpathy.
Here I must call attention to a peculiarity which
becomes more marked as we proceed. The use of
the initial letter B (the first letter of my name) for
the associations specially concerning myself (balay-
euse, bouffonnerie, boursouflure, bigoudi, berlingot,
bavarde, bilan, bordereau, barème, baliverne, etc.).
Soon we shall have proper nouns beginning with B.
The same game will be played with C, the initial
letter of my Christian name. The important part
played by the Christian name (from the first days
of the second week) demonstrates a step forward on
the path to intimacy.
II. (From July 17 to July 22nd.) Rynaldo calls
me:
Cormerais Baryton (a play on my initials)
Carolus Duran
caloried or coloured Ibsen (cf. ** Norwegian" in
No. I)
Norwegian cooking
foundered renovator (because I seemed to him very
tired and, perhaps even, ill; elsewhere he calls
me *^ starved restorer^*).
Psychoanalysis itself comes in for:
verbal shittification [merdalisation verbale]
I spit
tiring colloquy
internal radiography
infantile radiography.
\
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 429
Soteriou is still regretted, but lie is losing ground
and is not spared back-handed compliments (he is
often indicated by the letter S).
Distinguished sinapism
evicted sinapism
evicted concubine
unknown beardless youth
dethroned Constantine.
The relationship between Soteriou and myself is
expressed in the following manner:
Unconquered soubrette and Norwegian rhapsody.
Bergson refuted, Syllabus ordered.
The associations show repining over the loss of
Soteriou and protest against myself. In the next
we have a reversal :
Socrates flattened out, Rostand let loose.
'* Socrates,'' a Greek, represents Soteriou. The
word reveals knowledge on the part of the subject
that homosexual practices had a considerable vogue
in classical Greece, and lays bare the homosexual
tendency in Rynaldo to which Soteriou had drawn
attention before his departure. **Eostand'' calls
up ** Cyrano de Bergerac'' (C. B., my initials) which
symbolises for Rynaldo extroversion (whence we
have *^let loose"), and normal love, which is youth-
ful, full of poetry, and romance. He is beginning to
feel that he is entering upon a normal life, upon
430 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
extroversion; this victory is associated with my-
self. To **Kostand let loose'' we may add:
Bergerac returned
bedevilled rhinoceros (we have already seen tJiat I
am the rhinoceros).
Once more the subject harks back to the theme of
Soteriou's departure:
Foreseen separation
unpunished desertion.
Transference on to the analyst yields the follow-
ing:
Tasted comradeship
Olympian concupiscence
chosen darling
strange proposal.
The fixation, and the sublimation of the homosex-
ual tendency, are seen passing under the guise of a
budding friendship for the analyst.
At this point there appeared a neologism which
was to crop up frequently in the sequel. It was :
Bistrome.
The word seems to be a condensation of **bis"
plus **Traum" (dream) with **bis" plus ^*trop"
(too much). This signifies: **The analyst is a
booze-vendor [bistrot], two analysts of dreams;
two, that's too much."
THE SEARCH FOR A GVIDB 431
III. (From July 22nd to July 31st). I have al-
ready appeared as *^ coloured '^ (coloured Ibsen, II).
Rynaldo had noticed that I was sunburnt, whereas
he was very pale ; this leads to fantasies wherein he
sets me up as his ideal of the health and manliness
he himself wishes to possess. These are some of
his names for me :
Calcined Merovingian
recooked Merovingian
far-fetched Bergson
praiseworthy Carlovingian and complex rhinoplasty
dissolvent calomel making use of feeling.
He seems in the next three to show a fancy that
he is winning my favour :
Shunted machine or imperceptible smile
extraordinary reconciliation
obligatory conciliation
But he still hesitates in his allegiance to me, and
makes double associations which appear to be al-
ternatives.
Ridiculous old geeser or intellectual stenography (cf.
internal raidography, II)
indelible sincerity, or commotion like a nut-cracker.
References to the upset caused by the change of
analyst still appear:
Duplicated cortège or unforeseen secretion.
432 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
But Soteriou is now withdrawing into the back-
ground :
Retreating apprentice
perplexed Victor Hugo and finished Isadora Duncan.
** Perplexed Victor Hugo" (another bearded man
of the Ibsen tribe) is myself; this is associated with
** complex rhinoplasty." ** Isadora Duncan," a
symbol of Greek dancing, is Soteriou.
Hope of recovery now begins to come definitely
,to the fore :
Peculiar penitent's robe, and proven infantilism
retarded morality and resolution in the near future
retarded rudder and redemption in the near future.
''The penitent's robe" is introversion; ** retarded
morality" is the development of the moral life which
has been held in check by infantile fixations. The
subject is realising his condition and hopes soon to
rise above it and free himself. His optimism in this
respect increases concomitantly with his affective
reconciliation to myself. But Eynaldo has not yet
quite overcome me. He has already called me
''priggish," a "prig," and an "insensitive virtuous
man." Now he says I am an
unviolated Cunigunde.
rV. (From July 31st to August 6th). This week
proves to be the turning-point. We are faced with
resurrection fantasies.
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 433
The sky would be
baby linen
Lazarus resurrected from the dead.
This resurrection does in truth take place at the
very moment when the affective bond with me is
established. But even now some of the old jokes at
my expense crop up :
Hairy [velu] cargo and bloated rhinoceros.
But he adds :
Creative intuition {a condensation of ''intuitiam*'
and of ** creative evolution**; a reminiscence of
Bergson who has already served as a symbol of
myself, II)
Bazaartherapy divulged, rational history developed
I and authentic {this is the analysis)
Machiavellian inspiration
divine intervention
Bourget the redeemer
triumphant ready-reckoner
cure obtained thanks to the coefficient Nilakantha.
**Nilakantha,'' the father of Lakmé, is an **old
brahman. ^' This calls up by association: *^man of
??ronze," *^ turned by the sun" — again we have in
these associations, references to myself (cf. III).
Transference finds expression in the following
symbols :
Carolina longed for and obtained ('^Carolina longed
for** [voidne] is associated with '* hairy cargo**
[cargadson velu])
434 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
refreshing household, refreshment obtained, miti-
gated bending
complicity miexpeeted and renovating
respectful gallantry foreseen
close collaboration.
New fantasies concerning the change of analyst
now arise:
Particoloured innovator
transient and local interruption
gyrating psychotherapy and mezzanine.
Soteriou continues his retreat:
Prolonged Turkish bath
ungummed minister
secondary uselessness or direct contact (i.e., useless-
Tisss of the ^^ minister'* and the ^'second/' and
direct contact with myself).
More and more does Eynaldo feel he is freeing
himself from the maternal complex, from exclusive
introversion, from infantilism; that he is on the
way to acquire virility :
Delicate majoration and nebulous infantilism (the
'^rrmj oration'' is the coming of age, and symbolises
the attainmient of virility),
definitely masculine
rejected embryo
lapsed incest
evicted sorceress (the mother)
burned sarcophagus or wonderful rumour
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 435
magisterial evolution
light on the horizon, wonderful wild rose
decidedly more light or rational induction.
V. (From August 7th to August 18th). Prog-
ress continues:
Disconcerting mneme or Rhine gold found again.
The ** mneme'' is the long-forgotten incident
which lay buried in the subconscious. With the
** Rhine gold'* the subject has spontaneously dis-
covered the collective symbol, a saga, to which we
have previously drawn attention : the precious thing
which has been buried but is found once again.
The morbid state is thus defined:
Cerebral derangement armed with all the necessary
implements for repair.
Now psychoanalysis is described as :
Inventoried dustbin or German system
regenerative instinct or distinguished machinery.
Soteriou puts in an appearance:
Saute-ruisseau [leaper over a stream] condemned.
**Saute-ruisseau'' is but a slightly disguised par-
ody of the name Soteriou and means that Soteriou
has crossed the sea. To this is added a hint of dis-
paragement.
436 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
A few resentful jibes at myself still crop up :
Destitute Balzac
foundered Bajazet.
But the acceptation of myself, which is sometimes
quite enthusiastic, continues to appear:
Nocturnal power or Merovingian prop
light calorigene or public demonstration.
" Calorigene ' ' is a condensation of '*Carlovin-
gian'' and of ** coloré*' [translated *^ coloured '*]
and ** calorie'' [translated **caloried"].
Eynaldo continues to show his confidence that he
is improving :
masculine diversion or retroversion improbable
bazaar sorceress
system adopted or profound renovation.
VI. (From August 21st to August 26th). Ey-
naldo is still describing the interconnection of the
two analysts in the form of an
ill-fitting hinge.
He is still at times in a reproachful mood towards
me. Especially, he is annoyed with me for making
him note down his dreams and his associations :
infected with gallophobia or prescribed manuscript.
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 437
But compliments preponderate:
inventive Carolina or distinct mneme
illustrated Bergerac or coincident system
voluptuous caress or imminent redemption
Calomel Vishnu {a fresh remdniscence of the father
of Lakmé) or prophetic shaviag
perfect semolina or pacified rhinoceros
oleagenous substance or satisfied rhinoceros
mollified prig or venerable substance
strange intervention or radically cured
perfect semolina or profound renovation.
Since the beginning of the analysis, Rynaldo has
frequently had a dream in which he sees himself
painting in a flat in course of decoration. In this
dream, everything had invariably gone amiss. Now
the dream recurred in a way that indicated progress,
for the work in the flat was going better :
VII. We are painting the woodwork of the draw-
ing-room, painting it pink; there is not enough paint,
so I mix some more; since I am not quite sure that
I have got the right shade, I fetch an old workman
who was a friend of my father. The pink I have
mixed is not exactly like the first ; it depends how one
looks at it. ... I forgot to say at the beginning of the
dream: I was delighted to find that I was painting
quite easily, without being bothered as I had been
before.
The colour *'pink'' [in French **rose''] calls up
*Ho see life through rose-coloured spectacles,*' this
referring to the cure of the neurasthenia. Other
438 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
allusions point to the search for the **father'' (a
friend of my father), that is to say, the search for
virility. There is something still lacking to this
virility, and that is why the paint he mixes in the
dream is rather pale.
^*Pink" reappears in the following dream.
VIII. (Night of August 31 to September 1st) :
To my right there was an enormous glass full of
pomegranate sjrrup, but I had made it too watery and
could not drink it. I heard the clock strike noon at
St. Pierre, so I had to leave.
The over-diluted pink beverage, a symbol of in-
complete virility and of unfinished cure, also sym-
bolises the imperfections of the transference.
Shortly before, in fact, I had been sitting with Ry-
naldo in a restaurant. He had ordered a glass of
vermouth which I had looked at somewhat censori-
ously. My order was a glass of pomegranate syrup,
which seemed to Rynaldo rather an unmanly drink,
so that it had become associated in his mind with
images of '^priggishness," **affectedness," ** fop-
pishness," etc. He had even chaffed me a little
for the immense quantity of water I added, which
made the colour of the drink very pale. That eve-
ning I had had to leave him to keep an appointment.
The clock striking at St. Pierre is the customary
signal for the close of our sittings. It is the sign
of parting.
The idea of the incompleteness of the transfer-
ence is condensed with that of the incompleteness of
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 439
the cure, and it is true that the cure follows closely
in the footsteps of the transference.
In the same dream there is a museum, which is
also a booth at a fair, where there is a merry-go-
round which is being dismantled and which is to be
carted away. These images are suggested by the
same reminiscence as that from which the pome-
granate syrup comes. When we were in the res-
taurant, a fair was in progress in the adjoining
square and there were some merry-go-rounds. In
them we have symbols of old trash which must be
cleared away. More especially, the merry-go-round,
turning on its own axis, is a symbol of autoerotism
and introversion, whereas the boy scouts, who now
appear on the scene, denote virility:
We think that the lorry {which is to carry awoAf
the merry-go-r&und) will find it difficult to start ; there
is a movement ; men dressed as boy scouts appear. Is
the cortege ready? Not yet.
The ^^ start'' is imminent, but the moment is not
yet quite come.
IX. (The same week from August 28th to Sep-
tember 3rd). The associations are coloured by the
pomegranate syrup:
sugary nonsense or special pruning
certain deduction or aperitive system
After the ** aperitives" (the pomegranate and the
vermouth) I had looked at my watch, had hesitated
440 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
for a moment while thinking of the time of my tram
and the distance from the station, and I had post-
poned my departure for a few minutes. Hence,
doubtless, the following association:
vacillating Boudouresqueness or station close at
hand.
These automatic associations, faithfully recorded,
were tending to assume an exaggerated develop-
ment. To encourage such a development would
have involved the risk of switching the subject
towards automatism and a duplication of conscious-
ness. Henceforward, therefore, I did my utmost to
secure more conscious associations to the items of
Eynaldo's dreams, and I begged him to give up
recording his automatic associations, notwithstand-
ing the great theoretical interest of this original
idiom. Henceforward we confined ourselves to the
analysis of the dreams.
September,
X. I am talking with the son of the master to whom
I was apprenticed. I say to him: "If only you had
known Flournoy, the psychologist! You remember
what an awful ass I was before I was re-edu-
cated! . . .''
**The master to whom he was apprenticed" ap-
pears in a whole series of dreams, and symbolises
the '^father." The *^ son'' is Eynaldo himself, espe-
cially when he was a youth. ** Flournoy the psy-
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 441
chologist" is myself. In this dream Eynaldo con-
verses with his sometime self, and is sorry he did
not make my acquaintance earlier. Now he is ** re-
educated. * '
The analyst still continues to play the leading
role:
XI. An excursion in the funicular railway. . . .
I get into the train at a place where there seems to be
a branch line; the dream apparently implied that it
was at Corsier, but I had an impression of being at
Saconnex or at Chambésy. The train is running down
a steep hill; I think of the dangers should it get out
of hand ; at the same time I note how calmly and easily
the driver manages his machine.
'* Corsier'' calls up ** opposite Coppet.'' The
dream takes place at the date when I removed from
Saconnex d'Arve to Coppet. I stayed at Coppet
the whole of that autumn; Eynaldo knew that this
would interfere with our acquaintance and neces-
sitate a longer interval between the sittings. He
shows his uneasiness; at the same time he has con-
fidence in the ** driver," who symbolises myself.
XII. A youngish woman (she seems to be a singer
at a café chantant) who offers to sell me a bicycle for
80 francs. She tells me that an inner tube larger
than the pneumatic tire (or the wheel?) is given
away free with the purchase. But some difficulty or
other with the telephone brings the affair to naught.
It seemed as if the bicycles were black-enamelled ; she
had several for sale.
442 Î5TUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Henceforth I become less prominent. Eynaldo has
acquired extroversion, he is beginning to face the
problems of life. The dream shows a desire for a
normal and healthy love. The '^difiGiculty . . . with
the telephone'' is an allusion to a *' telephonist"
with whom Eynaldo had once had a love affair
** which had been spoiled by a misunderstanding."
The young lady had ^ laughed at his odd sort of
phiz/' and this had increased his neurasthenia (the
incident occurred fourteen years ago) . The * * singer
at a café chantant" who has ^'several bicycles to
sell ' symbolises a woman of shady character. The
term *^ black enamelled" arouses the following asso-
ciations: '^things coming from Germany; excess of
regulation, too cold; French letter" — all of them
symbolising sexuality without love. This does not
satisfy the subject, who aspires to something more
complete and more wholesome.
October,
Xni. (The following dreams are some among
many which occurred during the same night).
(1) I am working for my godfather, and at the
same time for my factory. An old workmate, with
whom I had quarrelled comes in search of work. I am
surprised at his friendliness. . . .
(2) Two pretty girls arrive on a little sledge; are
they gliding over the water or over the land? The
sledge reminds me of Lohengrin's swan, and perhaps
of the Holy Grail as well.
(3) A great patriotic demonstration is to take place
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 443
in Bel- Air Square. Some young socialists whistle and
hoot ; when they are separated from the crowd, I notice
that the patriots are few in number.
The two women of the second episode often ap-
pear in the dreams of this period; they alternate
with the two analysts, and tend to replace them.
The affect, having detached itself from infantile fix-
ations, and having been transferred on to the an-
alysts, must once again free itself — from the new
fixation. But, as we have seen, Eynaldo is not con-
tent to gratify his brute instinct ; he aspires to sub-
limation : whence the ^ ' Holy Grail. ' ' By association
we get ^Hhe Sacred Heart in course of construc-
tion.'' '^Lohengrin'' (a reminiscence of Rynaldo's
fifteenth year) is a revival of youth.
In the first episode, the *' godfather ' ' is a substi-
tute for the '^father"; other associations lead to ^'a
blear-eyed goldfinch"; *'We once had a goldfinch
which pined away after my father's death." The
** workmate with whom he had quarrelled" sym-
bolises the virility Eynaldo had lost, but which he
has found again.
The '* patriots" in the third episode call up out-
worn ideas (cf. museum, merry-go-round, dream
VIII) and the ** young socialists" symbolise young
and fresh ideas concerning the sound health he has
reacquired (they also denote a progress in the direc-
tion of the social instinct).
XIV. Eynaldo dreams of a place ** which recalls
the workyard where he was apprenticed, and which
is situated opposite the church of the Sacred Heart
444 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
where he made his first communion." Another
reference to his reconquered virility and to his de-
sire for sublimation. In the same dream there is
something about a fire — a symbol which, for
Eynaldo, represents his neuropathic condition.
But
I see the fire-engines coming to extinguish the flames,
they come from Carouge. . . . They are all motor fire-
engines; they come with the utmost speed, and give
the impression of being well made and powerful.
I live in the direction of Carouge (this is con-
nected with the series of proper names beginning
with C). The *^ motor" fire-engines [pompes auto-
mobiles] symbolise autosuggestion. Confidence in
me remains unshaken, but the subject adds to this a
confidence in himself; he is cutting loose from me
as fast as he feels he can do without me.
That same night Eynaldo dreams of '*two clerks
who have come from the town hall"; these are the
two analysts, but henceforward they are equals, and
are no longer referred to with the passionate epi-
thets which qualified them of yore.
XV. The *' start" which we thought imminent,
though somewhat difficult (VIII), now takes place.
The dreams abound in daring deeds, unconstrained-
ness, which had not been present before.
Rue de Carouge, I'm in front of a house. I am
undecided; shall I go away in a motor car, for it is
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 445
muddy; shall I break my neck? Indecision. Finally,
Itli^nk:''WellI'llsee/*
And thereupon — he goes!
He dreams of me as *^ Charles' circus," but he is
surprised to find how small the circus is. Another
dream is about a machine (resembling a projector
at Charles' circus) which *^ attunes and concludes
the link between the interior and the exterior, ' ' that
is to say, which helps the introvert to *^ project"
himself into life.
XVI. . . . An empty flat. I try some of the fit-
ments. I unhook something from the wall — I don't
know what it is. Someone comes in. Who is it? One
of the bosses? At any rate is it an imposing, sedate,
and kindly person. To my right there is an open cup-
board. At the top there is a little medallion from
which a woman's head (living) looks at me. In the
idea of the dream she is motionless, but I know that
she is waiting for me to unhook her.
I appear again in this dream, being now the
** kindly boss," but in these traits I am more or less
condensed with the father. The *^ cupboard" had
appeared in earlier associations, but it was closed
and it needed to be opened. It had called up *'the
cupboard where the treasure is," so that Rynaldo
seems to have hit upon a motif of saga. The
woman who is to be ^* unhooked" is likewise the
motif of a saga, that of Andromeda rescued by Per-
seus. The two motifs, that of the treasure and that
of Andromeda, mean the same thing. The question
446 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
at issue is the '* unhooking" (the setting free) of
the vital energy which has been pent up by the in-
fantile fixations.
November,
XVII. The cure is close at hand. There is now
a wealth of such symbols as ^* Place Neuve, '^ ^* Cy-
rano," ^^Tannhauser" (associated with *^ Lohen-
grin," XIII). There is question of a * Wonderful
clock. ' '
Both wheels of my bicycle have been mended, but
who will put them together again or wind them up
[remonter] ?— for I know that the time for the start
is at hand.
Eynaldo's sexual dreams are normal; they have
no tinge of homosexuality or of autoerotism. For
example :
A machine which goes down and up, like a lift ; it
seemed to me to stop and distribute its contents into
some sort of round aperture.
Li the following dream the subject describes the
results of the analysis and his own feelings about it.
XVIII. In the cathedral of St. Pierre an employer
is talking to some hands he thinks of engaging; he
converses with a young man — suddenly they go down
the stairway — wide and gloomy — I follow them carry-
ing a large stone ; I am rather afraid of falling, for the
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 447
steps seem to me to vary in height ; but I go down very
quickly. When I reach the first floor, I throw my
stone out of the window ; it does not fall where I had
expected ; but I explain to two young fellows who are
looking at me that it is better the stone should have
fallen just as it did.
In this dream we meet again the two analysts
(the ** employer'' and the *^ young man'') conversing
as equals. The cathedral of St. Pierre, close to the
Jean Jacques Eousseau Institute where Kynaldo
comes to consult me, has already served to symbolise
the place where the analyses are carried on. (The
reader will remember that the clock striking at St.
Pierre was the signal that our interviews must close.)
Apropos of this dream, Kynaldo said to me: ^*The
re-education has not been precisely what I expected,
but I think it is better as it is." The stone which
he throws out of the window is * * the burden of which
he is ridding himself. ' '
XIX. Next week he dreams of **a young lady of
the Coopé" who tells him that *Hhe goods you
ordered are ready." *^ Coopé" is short for ** coop-
erative grocery"; Eynaldo is very careful to write
it thus abridged. There is a condensation of '* Cop-
pet" (the name of the place where I was then liv-
ing) with ^* cooperation." No longer is the method
regarded by the subject as a complete abandonment
of himself into my hands ; it is a cooperation between
Eynaldo and myself. The loosening of the bonds
of the transference is still going on. Just now we
had a dream in which the two analysts were sym-
448 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
bolised by **aii employer and a young man."' At
length Eynaldo dreams of ^^an ex-employer and of
his pupil.'' This signifies that for him I am now
merely a whilom master, and that he has become his
own master. In another dream he expresses him-
self yet more categorically :
They had given me an assistant, but he was not a
craftsman, and it was quite understood that I alone
was the craftsman. I fancy that the foreman had
asked me about this or had drawn my attention to
the fact.
I have frequently urged Rynaldo to become ac-
customed to depend upon himself. In one of his
latest dreams he dreamed that he had been ** re-
established," had been *^ re-built upon himself."
He has also dreamed that he is *' working at some-
thing quite new," whereas formerly he always
dreamed about ^'repairs."
We have been watching the rise and the fall of a
transference. The stages of this transference were
parallel to those of the subject's progress. He re-
garded himself as cured as soon as the tie of the
transference had been loosened, and as soon as he
felt himself to have become his own master.
2, Stella
Sublimation of the Idea of the Guide.
From childhood onwards, the circumstances of
Stella's life have tended to cultivate introversion.
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 449
When she was born, her father was fifty-six, and
her mother twenty years younger. The mother died
when the little girl was only a few months old.
From the time of birth there was manifest a state
of powerlessness which was wrongly diagnosed as
* infantile paralysis. '* Later, the diagnosis was
disputed, and was eventually recognised to have been
erroneous. The condition improved during child-
hood, so that Stella became able to walk. When
she was fifteen, she had a fall, followed by teno-
synovitis, and six months' confinement to bed.
Henceforward, her walking powers were greatly im-
paired, so that she could not even get about the room
without sticks, and could only leave the house in a
wheel-chair or in a carriage.
Up to the age of eight, Stella was very fond of
her father, who was extremely kind to her, and used
to carry her about and to play with her. Then
there came a change in him. He became liable to
fits of temper which ^ * overwhelmed " the child; but,
more than all, she suffered from his coldness and
indifference towards herself. Unaware of the true
causes of this coldness, she fancied that his feelings
had changed, that he was dissatisfied with her. Ke-
pelled by her father and lacking a mother, she was
thrust back upon herself. Entrenching herself in
her morbid state, she used it as a house of refuge;
thus ** enjoying it,*' she accentuated it without real-
ising what she was doing. But in this refuge she
felt derelict. She was on the look-out for the
''father'' or the '* guide" she needed. The whole
of her analysis is dominated by this search for the
450 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
guide. At the date of the analysis she was forty-
five. All her inner life had been lonely; her feel-
ings had turned towards philosophical, moral, and
religious ends.
The first time Stella left her bed after she had
been bedridden for six months at the age of fifteen,
she made a point of going to see her father, think-
ing he would be delighted. Her father did not seem
to notice that anything had happened. This was a
great shock to her, a terrible disillusionment. **It
deprived me of all energy to do anything that might
make me better.'* The incident summarises all the
disappointment of her filial affection, all the conse-
quent withdrawal into herself, all her resignation to
illness — which was accepted, even gladly, because it
facilitated the withdrawal into the self. The re-
treat from the father was likewise a retreat from
the world. The two movements were identical, and
Stella felt towards the world, towards human beings
in general, precisely what she felt towards her
father. ^' Human beings have been a disappoint-
ment to me.'' She added: ** Again and again I
thought I had found a guide. Always I was mis-
taken. I have come to think that we have to guide
ourselves." It is easy to understand what psychic
elements were superadded to the physical condition
so as to aggravate the latter. It was not difficult,
therefore, for analysis and suggestion to bring about
an improvement in the bodily state, but at this stage
something occurred which arrested progress and
even led to a relapse. Her brother died. This was
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 451
a great grief, for Stella looked upon her brother as
a sort of father. She had transferred on to him
her strongest feelings. To some extent, he had be-
come for her the guide she needed, and she was cer-
tainly fonder of him than of anyone else in the
world. His death was as great a shock as had been
thirty years earlier her realisation that her father
was indifferent to her. The two things underwent
condensation in her mind, and the old feeling of
**what^s the use?" recurred. Once again she was
"deprived of all energy to do anything that might
make her better.'^ But it is not my aim here to
dwell upon the patient's bodily state. The details
concerning it have only been given because of the
relationships between the bodily state and the idea
of the "guide." On two occasions the loss of the
guide brought about the same flight from the world,
the same isolation, for which the illness furnished a
pretext.
The first dream to be analysed was the outcome
of this twofold preoccupation with the "guide" and
the "disappointment."
I. Someone — a man — gives Stella a white wicker
basket to hold. It is the sort of basket that bakers
use, covered with fine, clean linen. As soon as she has
the basket in her hand, there is a stir beneath the
linen cover, and a number of wasps fly out, though
she had believed that there was bread in the basket.
In a fright, she hands it back. The man who gave it
to her was sitting as driver upon the front seat of a
cart. The wasps buzzed, but not one of them stung
her.
452 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
The oblong ** basket" calls up as association the
shape of a *^ cradle." This is also the shape of the
ovary, a shape which, as we know, not infrequently .,
appears in dreams/ We discern here a condensa- |
tion of a number of primary wishes which have re-
mained unfulfilled: more particularly, there is a
duplex maternal craving, that to have a mother and
that to &6 a mother. The ** white linen" and the
** bread" call up **pure" and ^^true." But disil-
lusionment comes. The associations to ^Svasps"
are ^'poison," ^ ^ treachery, " ^'cruelty," *^ hatred."
Following upon the illusions of purity comes the
discovery of the repulsive aspect of passion.
*^ Driver" calls up ** guide." The guide also ap-
pears here as a man who might be loved. But the
idea of the guide is refused in this form. The sub-
ject has repelled every kind of sexual temptation.
This, manifestly, is the meaning of the last symbol :
**not one of them stung her."
In the dream which followed our first sitting we
find the joint preoccupations with the ** guide" and
the ** treatment."
II. I was living in a country house. I was on the
road near the house. ... I wanted to go into the
town, this town was M. (the subject's native city), to
attend a lecture upon local history. I had no other
means of going there but the little wheel-chair in
which I get about. / coiild have fou7id someone to
take me tJiere, hut there was no one to bring me back;
and the return would have to be made after dark. Yet
* Cf. Jeanne, dream VIII.
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 453
it was absolutely essential that I should go. I was
much disturbed about it, and unaided I managed to
make my way up a steep hill to the shed where my
wheel-chair was, although I knew that I should not
be able to get down again. But I was afraid of noth-
ing, for I absolutely must go to the lecture, even though
I had to go alone pushing my own chair along. All
the time there was someone near me; I could hear the
voice, but I did not know who it was. But this person
could not come with me y he could 'merely advise me.
He tried to persuade me not to go to the lecture ; or at
least, if I did go, to spend the night in the town. At
the same time he told me that, after the lecture, there
would be another lecture in the same hall, on psy-
chology this time; and he said that the two lectures
would last an hour and a half in all. This made me
feel more than ever how essential it was for me to go.
I awoke in the midst of my preparations for departure.
**An hour and a half had been the duration of
our first sitting, of which, as already said, the fore-
going dream was a sequel. The sitting had been
psychoanalytical, followed by suggestion. The re-
turn to the native city symbolises the way in which
the analysis had been delving into reminiscences of
childhood and into the subject's earliest ego. The
lecture on local history is psychoanalysis; the lec-
ture on psychology is suggestion. The associations,
which I shall not record, made these points perfectly
clear. Already, however, the question of the
*' guide'' comes to the front. '*She could be taken
to the town, but would have to come back alone."
I shall, in fact, be able to guide her for a time, but
454 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
then I shall leave her to herself once more, and the
prospect of this makes her nervous. In addition,
there is another guide, a rival of mine. He is not
an adequate guide, for he can only give advice, and
cannot accompany the subject. He is a person *'in
grey,'' and he calls up in association one of An-
dreieff's plays. The Life of Man. In this play there
is a mute, * * someone in grey, ' ' who carries a candle
of which the flame is born, grows, and dies simul-
taneously with the birth, growth, and death of
*^man," thus marking out all the stages of his life.
A person *^in grey,'' associated with a *^mute"; a
guide who can ^'give advice but cannot act as com-
panion"— here we have indications that we are con-
cerned with someone who is dead,^ but whose influ-
ence on Stella's mind persists. We readily recog-
nise the paternal imago. On the other hand, this
person in the dream reminds the subject of the driver
in dream I, the driver who symbolised * * man beloved
and a guide." The symbol, therefore, is compli-
cated. It represents the guide, in incarnations in
which the subject has given up searching for the
guide ; and yet she has not completely given up the
search in these incarnations, for the phantom guide
is still trying to keep her at home and to prevent
her from coming to see me.
In order that the analysis may be accepted, the
search for a guide, which is still fundamentally di-
rected towards the paternal imago, must be trans-
ferred on to the analyst. This mechanism is plainly
^ As to the symbolisation of the dead by persons clad in grey
who are mute, cf. Régis et Hesnard, op, cit., p. 171,
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 455
manifest in the following dream, in wMcli there ap-
pears the figure of another analyst who has been
interested in Stella's case a few years earlier:
III. ... I find myself face to face with X [the
analyst previously mentioned] , so suddenly that for a
moment I jostle him; but directly afterwards I step
backwards, saying: *'Verzeihen Sie, Doktor" [Excuse
me, Doctor] . He looks at me coldly, and says : * 'Bitte,
genieren Sie sich gar nicht" [Not at all]. ... I want
to retire to my room because this meeting distresses
me, but something hinders me, and I circle round him
without being able to get any farther. At length I
succeed. I go slowly, very slowly, towards my room.
I open the door and close it behind me very slowly,
always hoping that he will call me back. But he
merely says in a bored tone : ' ' Diese Umstandlichkeit ! ' '
[What a fuss!] When I am in my room, I am filled
with despair. I say to myself: *'If only he had been
put out, there might still have been some hope of a
reconciliation ; but if there is nothing but indifference
and boredom, all is over ! " . . .
Her feeling at the close is the same that she had
had when fifteen years old in relation to her father's
indifference. Then, too, Stella would have pre-
ferred to see her father put out. We see signs of
the condensation of the father with the analyst, and
of transference on to the analyst. But the kinship
is closer. The analyst, like the father, is an inade-
quate gTiide, and will ultimately have to be re-
nounced. We have here the same apprehension as
that disclosed in dream II by the idea that she would
456 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
have to **come back alone.'' To round off the his-
tory, I should add that X. and Stella had quite
ceased to see one another, to Stella's great regret.
But the fundamental idea persists, that an analyst
is not a guide who can be permanently depended on,
and that the guide must be sought elsewhere.
In various dreams there appeared under diverse
forms the image of three psychotherapeutists on
whom, successively, Stella had projected her ideal
of the guide. At the time when she consulted me,
there had been a change in her state of mind; her
wish was, not so much that I should act as her guide,
as that I should help her to discover the guide in
herself.
IV. In one of the dreams of this series, three
doctors appear on the scene, as if in consultation,
introducing themselves by their titles (the three
psychotherapeutists). They are followed by a
young woman who gives a silent greeting. The as-
sociation to this *' young woman" is *' myself, that
which appears in me." In Stella's eyes, the young
woman represents a possibility of sublimation re-
lated to the analysis now in progress. I do not make
my entry on the stage as a fourth therapeutist; the
fourth comer is Stella herself, for she has decided
to seek the guide within herself. She has thought
over my theory of autosuggestion, and has found
therein the expression of this real need.
V. In another dream, whose symbolism is not
altogether complimentary to us psychoanalysts and
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 457
persons of a like category, the three previous courses
of treatment are symbolised by three water-closets,
which have been provided for the house, but which
cannot be used. Two of them are supplied mth
** every possible convenience,'' but **they will not
work because their system is too complicated."
The third is rather of a rustic character, but it can
only be reached by passing through dirty passages.
In the last instance, the reference is a painful one.
Stella had a very deep feeling for the third psycho-
therapeutist, but renounced it because she was
afraid it had sexual implications.
The analysis now in progress is symbolised by a
fourth water-closet. It is a long way from the
house, and one has to go there alone by a difficult
road. Here we may discern once more the call the
subject is making, and which I am encouraging, upon
her own energies.
The use of the fantastic symbol of the water-
closet may be explained in relation to the current
term **to pour oneself out,'' in the sense of ^* saying
everything that is in one's mind." It is also related
to a kindred expression in scientific terminology, for,
in the first days of psychoanalysis it was spoken of
by Breuer as the cathartic method — *^ cathartic" be-
ing a medical synonym for ^^ purgative." The sub-
ject was familiar with the expression *^the cathartic
method."
VI. We now reach a more adequate and more
comely symbol of the same phenomenon. We derive
it from the analysis of a drawing which Stella made
when in a reverie. The drawing represented a
458 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
golden cross fumished with golden balls. At the
centre of the cross was the letter S. At the ends
of the arms were the letters T. and E. respectively.
On the top was the letter A. The subject's Chris-
tian name begins with S.; E. means religion; T.,
work (travail) ; A., love (amour). But the following
associations show that the three letters E., T., and
A., really symbolise the three psychotherapeutists.
The first of these, she says, guided her towards re-
ligion. The second advised her to undertake some
specific worky to have an active aim in life. The
third, the central figure in the incident mentioned
above, was an enthusiast and an artist, and said that
no one had loved her enough to cure her. Stella
added: **I think now that one has to be one's own
guide. Each must carry his own burden."
This cross, drawn in a reverie, reminds her of a
similar cross seen in a dream. In the dream, a
golden ball fixed on the top of the cross (in place
of the letter A.) fell down, and she thinks of a fall
into a bottomless abyss. The ball likewise reminds
her of **the world." Thus the fall of this *^ball"
is the final renunciation of *4ove" and of the
*Vorld." The ball vanishes; the cross remains.
This signifies the contrast between the spiritual life
and the world. At the centre of the cross she sees
herself (S). She is determined to find the guide in
herself, and yet it must be a guide who transcends
her. She consciously designates him as the Christ;
not the Christ of dogma, but the living Christ, the
symbol of universal love.
The ** religion" which she had been advised by the
THE SEARCH FOR A GUIDE 459
first psyclioanalyst to espouse had been too much a
matter of externals. The ** guide" whom she seeks
is of a more mystical character. So far, then, the
dream and the reverie both express ideas of which
she is conscious ; but, more intimately, they express,
with a strange clarity of symbolism, the kinship of
this mystical guide with the earlier guides whom he
is to replace. We have, throughout, the same need,
originally directed towards the father, subsequently
passing by derivation towards various persons, and
finally undergoing sublimation as a spiritual ideal.^
VII. This spiritual orientation is not yet radical,
but wishes to become so. In a reverie, Stella wrote
almost unconsciously the words :
The matter must be settled. The change must be
restlos, restlos, restlos.
**Restlos" signifies ** without residue," ** radi-
cally." Quite mechanically, too, she drew a sort of
8, which at first suggested to her mind the German
name of this numeral, *^acht"; then, by a word-
play, *'gib Acht," meaning **take care," which was
a catchword of her father's. As in dream II, the
paternal imago (with its incarnations as aforesaid)
holds her back, being in opposition to the new ob-
ject on to which the need for a guide desires to
undergo transference. But to the paternal advice
^ At about the same stage, Stella made a drawing of a woman
on the cross. When she was asked what this sketch signified, she
answered: "It has always been a puzzle to me why the crucified
is invariably represented as the Christ, as a man, seeing that
woman is the eternally crucified!"
460 STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
^*take care'* is counterposed the earnestly reiter-
ated ^^restlos, restlos, restlos.*' A further associa-
tion is Goethe's phrase, ^^stirb und werde" (die
and become). Just as in the dream of the ball
which fell from the summit of the cross, so here, we
have the will to *^die to the world'' and to give her-
self up wholly to a higher life which, however spirit-
ual it may be, is still to remain active, to harmonise
within herself *^work" and sublimated *4ove."
Geneva, 1915-1921.
GLOSSARY
Most of the definitions are from the present work, or
from Baudouin 's Suggestion and Autosuggestion. For
Freudian usage (where this differs from Baudouin 's) the
translators are greatly indebted to Ernest Jones' Papers
on Psychoanalysis.
affect. Feeling. The essential constituent of emotion.
affective association. A synonym for condensation,
which see. Two ideas tinged with the same affect
tend to call one another up mutually (evocation).
anxiety neurosis. Functional nervous disorder in which
anxiety, i.e., intense morbid dread, is the most con-
spicuous and persistent symptom.
association. The linking of images, ideas, or mental
states so that one tends to call up another. See
evocation. Classical psychology recognised that
when two ideas, images, or mental states had oc-
curred together or in brief succession, the revival
of one tended to call up the other (association by
contiguity) ; and that linking also resulted when two
ideas or images contained like elements (association
by similarity) ; there is also association by contrast.
Psychoanalysts stress, in addition to these two
familiar types, a third type known as affective asso-
ciation, which see. See also free association.
autoerotism. Sexual excitement occurring independently
of actual relations with another individual, and self-
induced either physically or mentally. (Adjective,
autoerotic.)
461
462 GLOSSARY
autosuggestion. The subconscious realisation of an idea
in more or less complete independence of heterosug-
gestion.
cathartic method. The purging of the effects of a pent-
up emotion by bringing it to the surface of conscious-
ness. This term was applied by Breuer to the tech-
nique which was subsequently perfected as psycho-
analysis.
censor and censorship. In Freudian terminology, a fig-
urative impersonation to denote the sum of repres-
sive forces. Also spoken of as 'Hhe endopsychic
censor.'* See repression. For Baudouin 's critique
of the concept of the "censorship," see text pp. 68
et seq.
claustrophobia. Morbid dread of enclosed spaces.
collective symbols. See symbols. Collective symbols are
of the same nature as other symbols; they merely
presuppose that the condensations and displace-
ments on which they depend are such as occur in a
very large number of minds.
collective unconscious. Jung vrrites {Psychology of the
Unconscious, p. 198): ''Although individuals are
widely separated by differences in the contents of
their consciousness, they are closely alike in their
conscious psychology. It is a significant impression
for one working in practical psychoanalysis when
he realises how uniform are the typical unconscious
complexes." Thus the term ** collective uncon-
scious" does not signify much more than "the very
evident uniformity of the unconscious mechanism"
(ibid., p. 266). See also collective symbols ; also text,
p. 165; also Translators' Preface.
complex. A group of emotionally tinged ideas partially
or entirely repressed (Jones). According to Bau-
GLOSSARY 463
douin, the term, as generally used in psychoanalyti-
cal literature, lacks precise definition; it "may be
applied to . . . subconscious condensations accom-
panied by displacements." See p. 51. The reader
will do well to note that in current parlance the
notion of repression into the subconscious is not a
necessary part of the concept ''complex." For in-
stance, Culpin, in Spiritiuilism and the New Psy-
chology, defines the complex as a system of ideas hav-
ing a common centre, whether the system is present
in the consciousness or exists only in the unconscious.
In this sense a ''hobby" is based upon a complex,
though there may be no repression whatever. Such,
indeed, is Freud's own usage of the term, for he
defines complexes (Introductory Lectures, p. 90) as
* ' circles of thoughts and interests of strong affective
value."
condensation. The process whereby images character-
ised by a common affect are grouped so as to form a
single composite and new image. See p. 10. An
extreme form of affective association. Ribot's defi-
nition will be found on p. 28. See also evocation.
Freud writes (Introd/iictory Lectures, p. 144) : By
condensation "we mean to convey the fact that the
content of the manifest dream is less rich than that
of the latent thoughts, is, as it were, a kind of abbre-
viated translation of the latter." But he goes on to
say that, if we prefer, the significance of the term
may be limited to the process in virtue of which
'latent elements sharing some common character-
istic are in the manifest dream put together, blended
into a single whole."
contention. The psychological equivalent of attention,
minus effort. (Term employed by Baudouin in ex-
464 GLOSSARY
pounding the theory and practice of autosuggestion.)
See Translators' Preface.
delusions of persecution. See persecution complex.
dementia prœcox. A common form of insanity in which
a patient loses contact with reality and withdraws
into a world of his own imaginings.
derivation. The process in virtue of which the energy
of a thwarted instinct finds an outlet in a new chan-
nel. See also sublimation and displacement. Bau-
douin says (p. 94) : ^'Derivation is the projection
upon a dynamic plane of that which is displacement
upon a static plane."
displacement. Transference of affect from one idea (one
image, or one object) to another. Baudouin writes:
**It might be spoken of as a transference attended
by forgetfulness, complete or partial, of the point of
departure." See also transference (2). A fuller
definition will be found on p. 41.
dissociation. — (1) The inverse of association, which see.
The process in virtue of which the close linking be-
tween two ideas, images, or mental states, is resolved.
See pp. 202, 265.
(2) The break-up of consciousness into parts which
lead independent existences. See pp. 311, 424,
439.
Electra complex. Excessive attachment, sexually tinged,
of the daughter for the father. The feminine coun-
terpart of the Œdipus complex, which see. See also
fixation. Sometimes Baudouin refers to the Electra
complex, or at any rate to fixation upon the father,
as the paternal complex.
evocation. A term used by Claparède. Practically
synonymous with affective association or condensa-
tion, which see.
GLOSSARY 465
Also used in its familiar sense of *'a calling up"
{hj association — through contiguity, similarity, or
affective rapport).
exhibitionism. The exposure of some part of the body
usually concealed, in most cases the genital organs,
with accompanying sexual excitement. The person
performing such an act is an exhibitionist.
extrovert. One whose libido (which see) or vital impetus
or psychic energy tends mainly outward. Thus the
extrovert is predominantly a man or v/oman of feel-
ing or action. The state of being an extrovert is
called extroversion. See p. 110.
father-fixation. See fixation.
fixation. The arrest of an affect at a more primitive
stage than that normally corresponding to the indi-
vidual's age and development. Especially used of
the fixation of a daughter's sexual affection upon the
father (father-fixation, see Electro complex) ; and of
the fixation of a son's sexual affection upon the
mother (mother-fixation, see Œdipus complex).
free associations. Associations which do not have as
their starting point a dream or a reminiscence, but
such as arise when isolated words are uttered within
the hearing of the subject of analysis. — See asso-
ciation.
This is the sense in which Baudouin uses the term
in the Studies, for an application of the associative
method which has been especially developed by Jung.
But Freud applies the term to any associations which
are the outcome of *' undirected thinking." He
writes (Introductory Lectures, p. 88) : ''When I ask
a man to say what comes into his mind about any
given element in a dream, I require him to give him-
self up to the process of free association which fol-
466 GLOSSARY
lows when he keeps in mind the original idea.'' See
Translators' Preface.
guiding fiction. The image of an end to be attained,
which the mind sets up as a rationalisation (which
see), thus explaining to itself the urge of a subcon-
scious motive.
hallucination. An imaginary sensation, one to which no
objective reality corresponds, experienced while
awake. See also hypnagogic hallucinations.
hallucination by compromise. A hallucination suggested
by the illusory interpretation of an objective reality.
See p. 60.
heterosexual. Pertaining to sexual relationships be-
tween persons of different sexes.
heterosuggestion. The subconscious realisation of an
idea suggested by another. Also, the act of sug-
gesting an idea to another.
homosexuality. Love for a member of the same sex.
hjrpnagogic hallucinations. Hallucinations experienced
in the psychological state which immediately pre-
cedes falling asleep. They are thus intermediary be-
tween hallucinations proper (those experienced in
the waking state) and dreams.
hypnosis. A general name for states of outcropping of
the subconscious (which see) produced by immobili-
sation of the attention, and for states of somnolence
which are distinguishable from ordinary drowsiness
by their mode of production.
ideoreflex process. The process by which an idea realises
itself or tends to realise itself in action. (It is to
this that Baudouin limits the significance of the term
suggestion.)
imagination. [The translators have been taken to task
by a reviewer for not including this term in the
GLOSSARY 467
Glossary to Suggestion and Autosuggestion. Like
other persons, Baudouin uses the word in varying
senses, which the context makes intelligible.] The
meaning ranges from: (1) The action of imagining,
or forming a mental concept of, what is not actually
present to the senses; to (2) the faculty by which
images are formed, or revived, the latter being ** re-
productive imagination''; and (3) the power which
the mind has of forming concepts beyond those de-
rived from external objects, this being ''productive
imagination"; and (4) the creative faculty of the
mind in its highest aspect, its power of framing new
and striking intellectual conceptions, its poetic or
scientific genius — this is ''creative imagination."
infantilism. Fixation at an infantile state, and especially
at an infantile state of feeling. See fixation.
inferiority complex. (Adler's terminology.) The com-
plex which results from the thwarting of man's
natural urge to self-expansion, and which (when
repressed into the subconscious) impels him to try
to achieve power along some other line than that in
which his energies are blocked. See also masculine
protest.
interest. This term is suggested by Claparède to replace
libido, which see. See text, p. 113.
introvert. One whose libido (which see) or vital impetus
or psychic energy tends mainly inward. Thus the
introvert is predominantly a thinker. The state of
being an introvert is called introversion. See
p. 110.
kinaesthetic sensations. Sensations that accompany mus-
cular movements or efforts. Sometimes spoken of
collectively as the "muscular sense."
libido. Sexual hunger; the mental aspect of the sexual
468 GLOSSARY
instinct. But by psychoanalysts the term * 'sexual"
is used with wide connotations, so that "libido" be-
comes almost synonymous with ''psychic energy,"
and also with what Bergson terms the "vital im-
petus." Indeed, Tansley defines libido as "the
psychic energy inherent in the great natural com-
plexes, or becoming attached to any individual com-
plex, and discharging itself along the appropriate
conative channels." In like manner, Jung unifies
all instinctive energy under the term "libido." See
also text, p. 102. Baudouin (p. 108) summarises the
definition thus: "Libido is instinctive energy consid-
ered from the outlook of the faculty for undergoing
transformation and evolution." [This word should
be pronounced "libeedo," with the stress on the
second syllable.]
masculine protest. (Adler's terminology.) The in-
feriority complex (which see) leads to a desire for
superiority — a "wish to be a complete man," the
"masculine protest." Adler regards the idea of in-
feriority as associated with femininity.
masochism. Voluptuous (sexual) enjoyment experienced
when suffering mental or bodily pain, usually in-
flicted from without; the counterpart of sadism.
maternal complex. See Œdipus complex.
memory trace. The effect left on the organism by any
experience, the effect in virtue of which, when the
like experience recurs, the reaction of mind or body
differs from that which was the immediate result of
the first experience of the kind.
mother-fixation. See fixation.
narcissism. The concentration of interest (usually sexual
interest) upon one's own body and one's own per-
sonality in general. (From the myth of Narcissus.)
GLOSSARY 469
Some Freudian writers shorten the term to *'nar-
cism. ' '
neurosis. Functional disorder of the nervous system.
According to psychoanalytical theory, such disorder
is (in many cases at least) an undesirable derivative
of thwarted instinctive energy. See derivation.
Œdipus complex. Defined by Ernest Jones as ''the
(usually unconscious) desire of a son to kill his
father and possess his mother." Many would prefer
to define it, less uncompromisingly, as excessive at-
tachment, sexually tinged, of the son for the mother.
The counterpart in women is the Electra complex,
which see. See also fixation. Baudouin tersely de-
fines the Œdipus complex as ''the condition in which
a boy is greatly attached to his mother while more
or less hostile to his father." See text, p. 219.
Sometimes Baudouin refers to the Œdipus complex,
or at any rate to fixation upon the mother, as the
maternal complex.
outcropping of the subconscious. The invasion of the
upper levels of consciousness by uprushes from the
subconscious. See Translators' Preface.
over-determination. In Freudian phraseology, when a
psychological phenomenon is the outcome of several
factors, any one of which seems competent (acting
in isolation) to produce the effect, it is said to be
"over-determined." Baudouin uses the term in a
rather more restricted sense: "The elements which
are associated (condensed) in virtue of their being
tinged with a common affect, are usually associated
as well in virtue of the objective laws of association
(contiguity, similarity, contrast). See p. 52.
paternal complex. See Electra complex.
persecution complex. The psychoanalytical term for
470 GLOSSARY
what alienists usually speak of as ** delusions of per-
secution," these being morbid beliefs on the part of
a patient that he is being persecuted, slandered, and
injured.
phobia. Intense and persistent morbid dread of some
object or class of objects. See, for instance, claus-
trophobia.
psychoanalysis. (Freudian usage.) A study and anal-
ysis of man's unconscious motives and desires as
shown in various nervous disturbances and in cer-
tain manifestations of everyday life in normal indi-
viduals. Ernest Jones defines it briefly as '*the study
of unconscious mentation. "—Baudouin would not
reject this definition; but he also regards psycho-
analysis as * ' an evolutionary theory of the instincts. ' '
See p. 13.
rationalisation. The inventing of a reason for an atti-
tude or action, the motive of which is not recognised.
regression. Two meanings in Freudian terminology: (1)
Resolution of an idea into its sensorial components
instead of the usual passage onwards in the direction
of action. (2) Reversion of mental life, in some re-
spect, to that characteristic of an earlier stage of
development, often an infantile one. (Jones.) For
Baudouin 's critique of the term, see pp. 55 et seq.
representation. The image of an object in the mind.
Adjectival form representative. See also imagina-
tion.
repression. (Freudian usage.) The keeping from con-
sciousness of mental processes that would be painful
to it. See also censor. For Baudouin 's critique of
the Freudian theory of repression, see text, pp. 67
et seq. and pp. 79 et seq.
resistance. **The instinctive opposition displayed towards
GLOSSARY 471
any attempt to lay bare the unconscious ; a manifesta-
tion of the repressing forces." (Jones.)
sadism. Voluptuous (sexual) enjoyment on inflicting, or
witnessing the infliction of, bodily or mental pain;
the counterpart of masochism.
subconscious. In Baudouin 's terminology, a region of the
mind normally inaccessible to consciousness — usually
spoken of by psychoanalysts as the ** unconscious."
See Baudouin, Suggestion and Autosuggestion, pp.
275-6; also footnote to p. 73; also Translators'
Preface. [It should be noted that the Viennese
school of psychoanalysts (school of Freud) looks
upon the subconscious (unconscious) as preeminently
the storehouse of the ''lower" or more primitive
elements of human nature. The Zurich school
(school of Jung), on the other hand, stresses also the
importance of * * higher ' ' elements in the subconscious
(unconscious) — elements of a progressive character.
Baudouin does not commit himself to any theory on
this matter; but it will be obvious to his readers
that he does not regard the subconscious as merely
a Caliban.] Baudouin uses the form "subconscious"
because the ''unconscious" includes the sphere of
physiological processes (reflex action, etc.) which are
not mental at all. Thus, for him, the subconscious
is "the psychological unconscious." See Suggestion
and Autosuggestion, pp. 275-6.
sublimation. The employment of energy belonging to a
primitive instinct in a new and derived, i.e., non-
primitive, channel. E.g., the use of sexual energy in
"intellectual" love or creative work. Baudouin
terms sublimation "a successful and beneficent
derivation" (p. 85). See derivation. (See also p.
377.)
472 GLOSSARY
suggestibility. Readiness to realise a suggestion. (In
Baudouin 's use of the term — in more or less com-
plete independence of heterosuggestion.) Readiness
to realise an autosuggestion.
suggestion. The subconscious realisation of an idea.
See also ideoreflex process.
superiority complex. The individual's emotionally tinged
conviction that he excels others in one or many re-
spects. Often a subconscious reaction against the
inferiority complex, which see.
symbol. Something that, not being a portrait, stands
for something else ; an emblem. For peculiarities in
the psychoanalytical use of this term, see text, pp.
61 et seq. See sjrmbolism. See also collective sym-
bols.
sjrmbolism and symbolisation. Representation by sym-
bols. The Freudians regard this as the means
whereby the workings of the unconscious are veiled
from the conscious mind. But Baudouin writes (p.
10) : "Condensation (which see) ... is the first stage
in the creation of the symbol. I look upon sym-
bolisation as a general law of the imagination, and
not as being necessarily the outcome of the masking
of forbidden representations.'' See also Trans-
lators' Preface, and text, pp. 61, et seq.
systematised delusions. Delusions which produce a con-
sistent and logical effect upon the patient's conduct.
teleology, subconscious. The law of subconscious tele-
ology runs as follows: ''Suggestion acts by subcon-
scious teleology; when the end has been suggested,
the subconscious finds means for its realisation."
transference. (1) As used by Ribot. May in a sense be
regarded as the inverse of condensation (which see).
Here a feeling, instead of grouping round itself a
GLOSSARY 473
number of separate images, is itself dispersed over
a number of associated images. (See p. 30.)
(2) As used by Claparède in a sense identical with
that of Freud's VerscJiiehung (displacement). Simi-
lar to (1), but the feeling does not merely become
related to a new object; it is partly or wholly de-
tached from its former object. (See p. 33.) This
leads us to:
(3) As used by practising psychoanalysts to-day
in reference to ''the transference of affect on to the
analyst." The affect thus displaced may be either
positive or negative, a liking or a dislike. Trans-
ference on to the analyst, with ''fixation of affect,"
is discussed by Baudouin, pp. 139 et seq.
unconscious. See subconscious.
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INDEX
Abel, 316
Absence of Mind, 50
Absinthe as Symbol, 363, 365
Accent, vulgar, see Vulgarity
Acceptance —
of Analyst, see Transference
of Normal Love and Marriage,
320
Accident as Symbol, 150, 156,
157, 396, 406
Action —
Man of, 304, 306
pent-up, 11, 55, 57, 76
Actives, 55
Activity, outward, 304
Adam, old, Casting off, 319, 334
Adaptation biologique du Freud-
isme aux psychonévroses de
guerre, 21, 482
Adaptation to Real, 11, 73
Aeceb, 1, 9, 12, 13, 14, 104, 105,
106, 107, 108, 111, 115, 208,
219, 220, 268, 286, 467, 468,
475
Adolescence, Crisi of, 190-218
Adolescente, 191, 478
Affect—
see also Emotion
as Creator, 55
defined, 461
Affective aspect of Instinct, 88,
90
Affective Basis of Intelligence,
29, 54, 475
Affective Theory of the Associa-
tion of Ideas, 25-36
Affectives, 55
Affectivity —
based on Instinct, 96
Biological Theory of, 6, 14
explained by Instinct, 6
Mechanism of, 149
subconscious, 67
485
Agamemnon, 302
Alarm, subconscious sexual, 384
Algolagnia, 85
Allegory, 64
Amiel, 34
Anaesthesia induced by Sugges-
tion, 138
Analysis, see Psychoanalysis
Analysis of Mind, 3, 483
Analyst, see Psychoanalyst
Analytical Study of Psycho-
analysis, 112, 115
Andreieff, 454
Andromeda, 445
Anger, 89
Anguish, 239, 240
Animal Intelligence, 90, 483
Animated Statues, 173
Anonymous, 475
Ant and Grasshopper, 342
Anxiety, 238, 240, 326
Dream, see Dream
Neurosis, 115, 298, 461
States, 115, 237, 295, 296-320
Apollo, Uffizi, 259, 261, 262, 265
Apprentice as Substitute for Fa-
ther, 264
A propos d'un cas de contrac-
ture hystérique, 126, 481
Archaic Aspect of Dreams, 69,
70
Archaische Element e in den
Wahnideen eines Paranoiden,
70, 483
Aristotle, 7, 25
"Archives de Psychologie," 209,
477, 478, 480, 481
Aenold-Forster, 475
Arranging, Mania for, 383
Art, 76, 96, 117, 133
its Appeal depends on Rela-
tion to Complexes, 171
Origin and Function of, 387,
486
INDEX
Artistic Ambition, 322
Arts, plastic, 387
Aetus-Pebbelet, 396, 475, 476,
482
Association —
affective, 28, 33-53, 71, 72, 461,
463, 464, see also Condensa-
tion
affective, Laws of, 33-53
by Contiguity, 25, 28, 38, 39,
52, 72, 461, 469
by Contrast, 25, 46, 52, 152,
177, 356, 458, 461, 469
by Similarity, 25, 28, 38, 39,
52, 72, 461, 469
defined, 461
free, 62, 63, 389, 461, 465
Jimg's Researches, 53
of Ideas, Affective Theory, 25-
36
Association des Idées, 31, 166,
476
Associationism, 26, 27, 32, 41
to Psychoanalysis, 25-36
Associationist Evolutionists, 166
Associationists, 26, 27, 37, 41,
52
Associations —
Inheritance of, 166
spontaneous, 424, 440
Assoziationsfahigkeit in ihrer
Ahhàngigkeit von der Ver-
teilung der Wiederholung,
480
Asthma, 105
Attention, 61, 132
Attenuation of Affect by Dis-
placement, 152
Attitude toward Analyst, 421,
423
Authority —
maternal. Wish to escape from,
296, 347, 395
paternal, 187, 191, 214, 232,
265, 299
Auto-erotism, 85, 199, 372, 439,
446, 461
Automatic Association, 424, 440
Automatic Drawing, 457
Automatic Painting, 383
Automatic Writing, 204, 383,
424
Automatism, psychological, 121
Automatisme psychologique, 40,
479
Autopsychoanalysis, 266, 268-282
Autosuggestion, 123, 129, 130,
131, 142, 230, 233, 242, 243,
245, 263, 265, 277, 279, 281,
293, 299, 348, 354, 355, 382,
422, 425, 456, 462
Avarice, 182, 186
Avenue as Symbol, 358
Awkwardness and Constraint,
242-265
Bag as Symbol, 336
Bajazet, 436
Baldwin, 479
Balzac, 436
Bancels, see Laegttieb des
Bancels
Bandaged Eyes as Symbol, 389,
391, 393
Bankruptcv, fraudulent, as Sym-
bol, 326, 327, 329
Baron, 482
Basement Window as Symbol,
292
Basket as Symbol, 241
Baudouin, 15, 29, 50, 54, 60, 61,
79, 88, 128, 133, 209, 461,
462, 463, 464, 465, 467, 468,
469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 476
Bear —
as Symbol, 391, 392
Pit as Symbol, 389, 392
Bearded Man as Symbol, 181,
182, 271
Beast, himian, 209
Beasts, stickv, as Symbols, 166
Beatrice (Portinari), 305, 332
Benoist-Hanappier, 276
Bergerac, 429, 430, 437
Bergson, 5, 32, 33, 56, 57, 58,
59, 60, 61, 79, 109, 325, 326,
429, 431, 433, 468, 476
Bernheim, 112, 121, 122, 129, 136
Bibliography, 475-484
Bicycle —
as Symbol, 371
Wheels as Symbol, 241
Black Dress as Symbol, 200
INDEX
487
Bleuler, 52, 476
Blood as Symbol, 302, 358
Blushing, 181
Boaz, 120
Boaz endormi, 120
Bog as Symbol, 174, 175
Boit as Symbol, 241
Bourget, 433
Bovet, 4, 8, 9, 13, 14, 76, 85, 94,
115, 117, 118, 119, 375, 396,
476, 482
Boy Scouts, 439
Breaking away from Analyst,
421, 444
Breaking away from Father, see
Protest
Breaking away from Mother,
180, 296, 395, 397, see also
Fixation
Breathing Exercises, 382
Breuee, 32, 121, 122, 457, 476,
478
Bridges between recent and
earlier Psychology, 4, 19
Brill, 478
Bromides, 340, 367
Bronchitis, 329
Brother —
little, as Symbol, 308, 310
as Substitute for Father, 316,
327, 374, 451
Brown as Symbol, 225, 226
Bbunschvigg, 33, 476
Brush as Symbol, 338, 339
Bruyère, 251
Burglar as Symbol, 235, 236,
237, 319
Burial Fantasy, 185, 435
Burying as Symbol, 372
Bushy Trees as Symbol, 358
Butcher's Shop as Symbol, 176,
177
Café as Symbol, 175, 176, 177,
245
Cain, 316
Caliban, 471
Canary as Symbol, 244, 245, 246
Caractères, 251
Caresses, Refusal of, 179
Caressiye Impulse^ 330
Caricatures of psychological
Type, nervous Disorders as,
295
Carlos, Don, 98
"Carmel, Le," 279
Cassiopeia, 273
Catalepsy, 141
Categories of Psychoanalysis,
1-21, 96
Caterpillar as Symbol, 168
Cathartic Method, 457, 462^
Catholicism and Protestantism,
213 214
Causality, 62, 119
Cellar as Symbol, 181, 185
Censorship, 10, 68, 70, 71, 77,
78, 79, 80, 115, 125, 267,
289, 312, 462, 470, see also
Repression
Ce que les parents devraient
savoir sur leurs filles, 191,
482
Ceremonial, religious. Dislike
for, 321
Certain Age, Woman of, as Sym-
bol, 348
Chain as Symbol, 217
Change of Analyst, 422-448
Change of Beds as Symbol, 389
Charcot, 112, 121, 122, 125, 129,
141
Charles X, 65
Charming, Prince, 176
Cheerfulness, excessive, 383
Child as Symbol, 309, 318, 344
Child-bearing, Refusal of, 286
Children, 147-189
Chimney-Sweep as Symbol, 50,
63, 283
Christ, 39, 62, 120, 224, 369,
375, 420, 458, 459, see also
Jesus
Christian Science, 130
Clapaeêde, 4, 5, 26, 31, 32, 33,
51, 59, 73, 74, 101, 103, 108,
112, 113, 166, 464, 467, 468,
473, 476, 477
Clark, 352, 477
Classical Psychology, see Psy-
chology of the Schools
Claustrophobia, 118, 210, 462
Cleaning as Symbol, 349
488
INDEX
Clerk-
chief, as Substitute for Fa-
ther, 232, 382
head, as substitute for Fa-
ther, 232, 382
CliflFs as Symbol, 228
Clinical Study of some mental
Contents in epileptic At-
tacks, 352, 477
Clytemnestra, 302
Cochet, 143, 477
Coddling, 329, 333
Collaboration between Sugges-
tion and Psychoanalysis, 16,
138
Collected Papers on Analytical
Psychology, 480
Collective Neurosis, 106
Collective Suggestion, see Sug-
gestion, collective
Collective Unconscious, see Un-
conscious, collective
Columbus, 4, 92
Compensation (Adler), 104, 208
Complex —
defined, 51, 462
inferiority, 467, 468
maternal, see Maternal Com-
plex and Œdipus Complex
parental, see also Fixation
paternal, 231-242, 349, 464
Persecution, see Persecution,
Ideas of
Superiority, see Superiority
Complex
Uniform, 223
Complexes —
explaining normal Character
Traits, 294
revealed by favourite Poetry,
168
underlying Neuroses, 294
Comte, 20, 477
Concentration, 132
deficient, 321, 388
Conciliation of Psychoanalysis
with Suggestion, 127-143
Condensation, 10, 11, 28, 29, 30,
34-44, 59, 60, 62, 63, 84, 67,
68, 71, 72, 77, 86, 87, 94, 96,
97, 116, 117, 154, 166, 302,
327, 359, 411-420, 445, 451,
452, 455, 461, 462, 463, 464,
472
Law of, 51, 52
CONDILLAC, 25, 477
Confession, 143
Conflict, 115, 237, 241, 355,
378
in Children, 148
State of, 206-218
Conquête de soi-même, 475
Constantine, 427
Constraint, Feeling of, 184, 192-
195, 242-265
Consumption, see Tuberculosis
Contamination, Ideas of, 350,
351, 364, 365, see also De-
filement
Contemplations, 198
Contemplative Life, 331
Content —
latent, 463
manifest, 463
Contention, 132, 463
Contiguity —
see Association
Law of, 25
Continence, 240
Contracture, 32, 50, 361
Contrast —
see Association
between Psychoanalysis and
Suggestion, 121-127
Law of, 25
Contribution à Vétude des types
psychologiques, 109, 480
Convulsive seizures, see Epilepsy
Cooperative as Symbol, 447
Corpus Christi procession, 332
Coquetry objectified, 384, 386,
387
CouÉ, 129, 131, 134, 477
Councillors, federal, as Substi-
tutes for Father, 373
Cours de philosopMe positive,
477
Cours d'. esthétique, 27, 480
Courteline, 216
Creation, aesthetic, 11
Creative Imagination, see Imagi-
nation, creative
Creative Bevolution, 3, 482
INDEX
489
Crisis —
ApoUinian, 387
Dionysiac, 387
mental and nervous, as Sym-
bol, 383, 385, 386
of Adolescence, 190-218
of Hostility towards Analyst,
421
of Sublimation, 378
of Transference, 423
Crookedness as Symbol, 326
Crowd, Dislike of, 331
Cruelty in Children, 75
Cul-de-jatte, 18, see also Legless
Man
CuLPix, 3, 115, 463, 477
Cultivator of Hysteria, Charcot
as, 125, 141
Culture de la force morale, 475
Cultured Life, 356, 360
Cunigunde, 432
Cupboard as Symbol, 445
Curiosity, 117
Cyrano, 429, 446
Dagger as Symbol, 357
Dalcroze, 418, 419
Dame voilée, 200
Danaides, 317
Dance, St. Vitus's, 212
Dancing as Symbol, 208, 209,
212, 213, 218
Dante, 305, 332
Daewin, 63, 120, 166, 477
David, 120
Day-Dream, see Reverie
Death, 276
as Symbol, 175
Fear of, 269, 274, 423
Obsession by Idea of, 274
Decondensation, 63
Defilement —
see Contamination
as Symbol, 234, 236
Deformed Creature as Symbol,
366
Delirium, Language of, 350
Delusions of Persecution, 352-
361, 464, see also Persecu-
tion, Ideas of
Dementia prœcox, 18, 110, 464
Demon as Symbol, 309, 310, 316,
318, see also Devil
Demoniac, 127
Demosthenes, 104
Depreciation of Analyst, 252
Depression, Fits of, 196
Derelict Dream, 161, 162, 163,
see Dream
Derivation, 56, 86, 91, 94, 102,
116, 126, 127, 133, 134, 151,
377, 434, 459, 464, 469, 471
Dervish, dancing, as Symbol, 17,
218
Descartes, 5, 114
Descent of Man, 120
Désinvolture, 260
Desire killing Love, 323
Dessin au service de l'éducation,
306, 475, 476
Devil as Symbol, 208, 209, 212,
316, see also Demon
Diagnotische Assoziationsver-
siichen, 476
Direction (Orientation), 19
Director, spiritual, 143, 378
Dirty Food as Symbol, 409
Dirty Passages as Symbol, 457
Dirty Snow as Symbol, 341
Dirty Underlinen as Symbol,
301, 340, 349
Dirty Water as Symbol, 340, 349
Discipline —
Dislike for, 321, 328
Prussian, 263
Disguise in Dreams, 77
Disgust, 285, 326
for Coquetry, 384
inspired by Sexuality, 165,
256, 289, 357, 359, 385, 390,
397, 398
Disinterest, 59
Disorder, 301, 303
Disparagement of Analyst, 321
Displacement, 10, 11, 32, 34, 41,
45-50, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 71,
73, 74, 75, 77, 81, 94, 95, 113,
126, 150, 151, 152, 153, 330,
462, 464, 475
defined, 47
Law of, 52
Dissociation, 202, 265, 310, 424,
439, 464, 473
490
INDEX
Distinction, Person of, 355
Distinguished Persons, 356
Dog as Symbol, 167, 209, 212
Dogma, religious, Dislike for,
321
Doing-up Room as Symbol, 348,
349
Don Carlos, 98
Don Juan, 105
Door as Symbol, 48, 287, 288,
289
Dragon as Symbol, 207, 208,
209
Drama of Child and Father,
375
Dread, see also Fear and Phobia
Dread Father, 308
Dread God, 312
Dread Mother, 198, 258, 299,
305, 311
Dread of the Father, 231-242,
382, 390
Dream —
Anxiety, 249
as Guardian of Sleep. 68
Bergson's Theory of, 58
derelict, 161, 162, 163
drowning, 161, 163
erotic, 216, 240
falling, 209
Freud's Theory of, 68 et seq.
Function of, 11, 67-73
Immersion, 174
its Eelation to Play, 12, 73-76
latent, 463
manifest, 463
of forbidden Pleasures, 149,
156, 157, 160, see also Night-
mare
psychoanalytical Theory of, 34,
58
Suffocation, 175, 210, 274, 275,
276, 277
the symbolical Realisation of
an unsatisfied Tendency, 82
Dreaming and Action, 53-66
Dreaming and Play, 73-76
Dreams —
Language of, 350
Latent Sexuality in, 180
prophetic, 196
Dreams that point out the Way,
95, 96, 335
Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexual-
theorie, 85, 102, 478
Drever, 84, 89, 119, 447
Driver as Symbol, 441, 451, 454
Drop at the Wrist,- 361
Drowning Dream, 161, 163
Drunken People as Symbol, 226,
227
Duchosal, 197, 198
Dumas, 118, 477
Duncan, 432
DWELSHAUVEBS, 27, 28, 478
Dynamics of the affective Life,
67-120
Earth, Descent into, as Symbol,
172
Earth's Movement, Obsession
concerning, 298, 299, 314,
320
Ease, 252, 260, 261, 263
Lack of, 245
Ebbinghaus, 26, 478
Eclectics, 19, 27
Edeb, 115, 476, 478, 480
Education in Confraternity, 107
Educational Psychology, 89, 484
Educationist, Analyst as, 378,
423, 441
Effeminacy, 250, 261, 262
Ego Instinct, see Instinct, Ego
Egoism, 106
Einstein, 21
Elan vital, 109, 113
Electra Complex, 224, 464, 465,
469, see also Paternal Com-
plex
Elements of Psychology, 83, 484
Embryology, psychic, 100
Emotion, 88-93, 121, see also
Affect
Empiricists, 25
Energie spirituelle, 33, 58, 326,
476
Energy, 113, 119, 126
instinctive, 109, 112, 377
mental, 109
psychic, 465
Engine-Driver, see Driver
INDEX
491
Engine Headlights as Symbol,
312, 314, 317
Entdechungen auf dem Gehiete
der Seele, 483
Epilepsy, 367-376
Epileptic Insanity, 351
Epileptic States, 350
Erotic Attitude towards Analyst,
421
Erotic Dream, 216, 240
Erziehung ziir Gemeinscliaft, 107
Essai sur l'imagination créatrice,
29, 482
Essai sur l'introversion mys-
tique, 160, 481
Essay, see School Essay
Essay on the Creative Imagina-
tion, 482
Ethics, 77, 484
Etude critique sur l'évolution
des idées relatives à la
nature des hallucinations
vraies, 60, 481
EvAED, 191, 478
Evening as Symbol, 278
Evocation, 31, 36, 461, 463, 464
Law of, 51
Evolution —
mental, 119
of Instinct, 13, 82-96
Exaltation, Fits of, 196
Execution, An, 187
Exhibitionism, 85, 318, 383, 465
Exhumation as Symbol, 372
Expectoration as Symbol, 291,
399
Experimental Pedagogy and the
Psychology of the Child, 73,
477
Exploring as Symbol, 395, 406
Explosion as Symbol, 180
Extroversion, 108, 109, 110, 118,
165, 168, 195, 213, 227, 249,
250, 251, 254, 255, 314, 320,
328, 429, 442, 465
Facial Spasm, see Spasm of Eye-
lid
Falling —
as Symbol, 234, 391
Dream, 209
Reminiscence, 308
False Recognition, 326
Fantasy —
Burial, 185, 435
Fecimdity, 404
Immersion, 160
Virginitv, 419
Womb, Return to, 160, 165,
176, 182, 210, 220, 246, 257,
258, 365, 390
Father as Symbol, 249, 320, 373,
438
Father, divine, 375
Father-
Dread of, see Dread
Fear of, see Fear
Reconciliation wdth, symboli-
cal, 299
Repudiation of, 373
Substitutes for, see Substitute
tyrannical, 297, 307, 308, 309,
314, 390
Vengeance upon the, 317, 318
Father-Fixation, see Fixation
Fatherhood, Longing for, 317,
318
Fatigue —
disproportionate, 354
Duty, 335
Faust, 339
Fear —
(see also Dread and Phobia),
89, 117, 140, 272
of being late, 343
of Cemetery, 305
of Madness, 365
of Reality, 295
of the Father, 231-242, 382
of the Sexual, 118, 295
Fears concerning Childbirth, 282-
284
Fecundity, Fantasy of, 404
Feeling Tone, 38
Femininitv, Refusal of, 171-180,
228, 268, 284-291, 393-410
Feminist Revolt, 393, 405
Ferenczi, 123, 124, 125, 131,
139, 478
Fetichism for Women's Clothing,
243, 248
Feuchtersleben, 261, 262
Fiancé, 355, 356
Fiction, guiding, 106, 205, 466
492
INDEX
Finalism, 8, see also Teleology-
Fire as Symbol, 444
Fixation, 'l04, 464, 467, 468, 469
Father, 124, 221, 222, 223, 228,
314, 410-420, 465
infantile, 333, 337, 432, 443,
446, see also Regression
Mother, 124, 149, 159, 160, 162,
163, 169, 171-180, 219, 220,
238, 242, 246, 287, 288, 289,
313, 321, 323, 326, 332, 363,
390, 393, 395, 423, 426, 465,
467, 468, 469, see also Ma-
ternal Complex
Sister, 287, 289
upon the Analyst, 140, 142
Fixed Idea, see Obsession
Flesh and Spirit, 388
Flournoy, 1, 4, 31, 74, 440, 478
Flying Dutchman, see Phantom
Ship
flying Dutchman, 226
Forbidden Pleasure, see Pleasure
FoEEL, 83, 478
Forerunner of Psychoanalysis,
Nietzsche as, 387
Forerunners, 83, 483
Formula —
of Autosuggestion, 265
of Ease, 265
FORSTER, 475
Fourmis de la Suisse, 83, 478
Frank, 298
Free Associations, see Associa-
tion
Freedom from Mother, Desire
for, 395, see also Breaking
away from Mother
Freud, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 21, 31,
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 41, 48,
53, 54, 56, 58, 61, 62, 64, 66,
67, 68, 69, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78,
79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 92, 101,
102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107,
108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115,
120, 121, 122, 123, 127, 128,
129, 136, 139, 199, 219, 229,
266, 268, 269, 310, 314, 461,
463, 465, 475, 476, 477, 478
Freud's Concept of the Censor-
ship, 70, 483
Freud's Theory of the Dream,
67 et seq.
Frigidity, 284, 290
Frog as SjTnbol, 184, 185
Fruit, forbidden, see Pleasure
Function of Dreams, 11, 67-73
Function of the Real, 56, 325,
326
Fussy Activity, 221, 295, 339-349
Galileo, 21
Gattjchatnt, 3, 479
Gefiihlsbetonte Komplexe, 53
Genealogy of Tendencies, 96-120
General Survey, 1-21
Genesis, Book of, 368
Geneva as Meeting-place of two
Cultures, 4
George, Saint, 317, 318
German Spies as Symbol, 309,
310
Gil Bias, 215
Glossary, 461-473
Gluck, 475
Goblin as Symbol, 212
God-
as Love, 308
as Tyrant, 308
God's Eyes, 312
Goethe, 339, 459
Gonorrhœa, 322
Gracian, 260, 261, 262
Grasshopper and Ant, 342
Grey Clothing as Symbol, 270,
271, 273, 454
Grimacing old Women as Sym-
bol, 298, 299, 306
Grimm, 212, 257
Grundzuge der Psychologie, 481
Grogs, 12, 73, 76, 479
Gschwind, 482
Guardian of Sleep, Dream as,
68
Guérison et évolution dans la vie
de Vâme, 119, 481
Guid^-
Identification with, 366
Lack of, 396
Search for, 117, 296, 421-460
Sublimation of Idea of, 448-
460
INDEX
493
Guide (Cont.)
well-informed and cultured,
356
Guiding Dreams, 95, 96, 335^
Guiding Fiction, see Fiction,
Guiding
Gymnastics as Symbol, 213, 381
Habit-spasm, 32, 50
Haldane, 259
Hallucination, 60, 61, 209, 384,
466
by Compromise, 60, 466
hypnagogic, 298, 466
Hamilton, 25, 479
Hanappier, 276
Hart, 350, 479
Haste, Obsession with, 346
Hat-
pointed, as Symbol, 386
tall, as Symbol, 373
Headache, 192
Helvétius, 243
Henrath, 42-44
Hercules, 35, 278
Hesnaed, 1, 2, 53, 454, 479, 484
Heterosexuality, 466
Heterosuggestion, 466
Hide and Seek, 329
Hiding as Symbol, 237, 389
Hill, 477
HiNKLE, 480
History of a Five-Franc Piece,
181 et seq.
Hoarseness as Symbol, 398, 399
Hobby, 463
Holman, 477
Homeopathy, 367
Homesickness for Mother, 246
Homosexuality, 85, 105, 190,
191, 261, 268, 287, 289, 291,
295, 311, 312, 313, 314, 322,
375, 309, 421, 423, 427, 429,
446, 466
Hostility—
from, to Sympathy, 422-448
to the Analyst, 421
to the Family Environment,
351, 359
to the Father, 219, 220, 238,
239, 295, 297, 299, 393, 398,
469
Hostility {Cont.)
to the Mother, 295, 346
to the Sister, 295
Housework, Dislike of, 354, 359
Hugo, 120, 198, 375, 393, 432
Human Beast, 200
Hurry up, 343
Hydrophobia, 122
Hypersuggestibility, 205
Hypnagogic Hallucination, see
Hallucination
Hypnosis, 446, see also Hypno-
tism
Hypnotism, 17, 121, 122, 123,
124, 125, 128, 129, 130, 132,
136, 137, 200, 204
spontaneous, 202
three States of, 141
Hypothèse sur psychologischen
Bedeutung der Verfolgung-
sidee, 351, 480
Hysteria, 68, 110, 121, 125, 141,
352, 359
Ibsen, 425, 428, 431, 432
Ichtrieb, 103, 104, 109
Idées nouvelles sur la sugges-
tion, 475
Ideorefiex Power of Autosugges-
tion, 142
Ideoreflex Process, 446, 472
Ill-humour, 355, 357
"Illustration, L'," 194
Images, composite, 36
Imagination, 10, 73, 74, 268,
466, 470
affective, 81
based on Affectivity, 96
controlled by Subconscious, 148
creative, 11, 36, 54, 55, 57, 72,
104, 467
epic, 94
explained by Affectivity, 6
productive, 467
reproductive, 467
Imago —
maternal, 305, 306, 323, 330
paternal, 223, 228, 234, 304,
351, 420, 454, 459
Imitation, see Instinct, imitative
Imitation of Christ, 117
494
INDEX
Immersion —
Dream, 174
Fantasy, 160, 185, 186, 324
Impetus, vital, 109, 113, 465
Impotence, 284, 295, 321-339
Impulses, Control of, 132
Inattention, 56, 57
Incubated, Longing to be, 246
Indecent Assault, 364
Individualism, 221, 321, 322
of the Introvert, 250
Right to, 215
Indulgence, maternal, 182, 243
Infantile Aspect of Dream
States, 70, 72, 75
Infantile Attitude towards Ana-
lyst, 421
Infantile Attitude towards Par-
ents, 295, 314
Infantile autoerotic Stage, 199
Infantile erotic Feelings towards
Parents, 124
Infantile Paralysis, 449
Infantile Regression, 124, 334,
350, 373, 432, 434
Infantile Sexuality, 177, 219
Infantilism, 434, 467, see also
Regression
Inferiority Complex, 467, 468,
472
Influence, 142, 143
undue, Analyst must avoid,
422
Inhibition, 57, 83, 217
Inland as Symbol of Extrover-
sion, 211
Innate Associations and Conden-
sations, 166
Insanity —
and Epilepsy, 370
epileptic, 351
Insomnia, 245, 423
Inspéctionism, 85
Instability, physical. Feeling of,
298
Instinct —
combative, 4, 76, 89, 94, 97,
115, 117, 118, 119, 246, 248,
310
Disorders of, 90
Ego, 103, 108
Evolution of, 12, 82-96, 97, 112
Instinct (Cont.)
for Motherhood, 266, 267, 268,
282-292
for Power, 12, 114
imitative, 117, 118, 140, 251
maternal, 117, 378
material, thwarted, 393-410
of Courtship, 118
of Expansion of Personality,
104
of Self-Preservation, 104, 115,
266-293
sexual, 12, 85, 92, 93, 97, 101,
102, 103, 104, 109, 114, 115,
117, 118, 140, 199, 214, 246,
267, 378
Sleep as, 73
social, 118, 221, 443
sublimated. Repression of, 255,
418
Suppression of, 12, 85, 87, 88,
116
thwarted, 377
Transformation of, 12, 83, 85,
90, 119
Instinct and the Unconscious, 21,
115, 482, 483
Instinct combatif, 4, 76, 85, 115,
119, 476
Instinct in Man, 84, 89, 119, 477
Instinct with Original Observa-
tions of Young Animals, 484
Instincts expressed in Dreams,
266
Institut de rhythmique Jaques
Dalcroze, 419
Institut Jean Jacques Rousseau,
419, 447
Institute for the Practice of
Autosuggestion, 477
Intelligence, 11, 73, 84
Interest, 91, 113, 141
"Internationale Zeitschrift ftir
Psychoanalyse," 478
Internment, 322
Interpretation of Dreams, 269,
478
Interpretation of Dreams, 156
Interpretation of Dreams, Sim-
plicity in, 156
Introduction à la psychologie,
481
INDEX
495
Introduction à la vie de Vesprit,
33, 476
Introduction to Social Psychol-
ogy, 89, 481
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-
analysis, 103, 463, 478
Introjektion und Uebertro^gung,
123, 478
Introspection, 296, 321
Introversion, -56, 94, 108, 109,
110, 117, 118, 181-186, 211,
219, 246, 250, 254, 258, 260,
265, 273, 320, 323, 324, 325,
326, 328, 353-361, 372, 375,
388, 432, 434, 439, 448
Inversion, see Homosexuality
Ironmaster, 407
Italian as Symbol, 336, 337
"Jahrbuch fiir psychoanalytisclie
und psycliopathologische For-
schungen," 479
James, 4, 5, 7, 12, 83, 84, 85, 88,
89, 91, 479
Janet, 20, 21, 40, 56, 70, 121,
122, 128, 140, 479
Jealousy, 219, 226, 239, 297, 341,
342, 343
Jehovah, 308
Jelliffe, 71, 479, 484
Jesus, 207, 208, 366, 370, see also
Christ
Society of, 116
John the Baptist, 303
Jones, 115, 461, 462, 469, 470,
478, 480
Joseph, Saint, 271, 273
JosT, 26, 480
JouFFBOY, 5, 27, 28, 480
"Journal de Psychologie," 21, 482
"Journal of Psychology," 479
Juan, Don, 105
Jumping as Symbol, 372
Jung, 1, 3, 9, 12, 53, 56, 69, 70,
74, 94, 100, 102, 103, 104,
107, 108, 109, 110, 119, 462,
465, 471, 476, 480
Justice, Statue of, as Symbol,
389, 391, 392
Kaiser as Symbol, 309, 310
Kemp, 259
Killing the old Man, 187 et seq.
Kinsesthesia, 58, 267
Kingdom divided against itself,
218
Kinship, biological, 99
KoLNAi, 100, 480
Komplexe, 53
Knife as Symbol, 398
Laederach, 42-44
Laforgue, 40
Lakmé, 432, 437
Lamp as Symbol, 180
Lang, 351, 480
Language of Dreams, 350
Laeguier des B angels, 6, 81,
116, 475, 481
Late, Fear of being, 343
Latent Content, 463
Latent Sexuality in Dreams, 180
Latin Quarter, 214, 216
Lay, Le, 479
Lazarus, 433
Leaders —
as Substitutes for Father, 373
Revolt against, as Symbol, 374
Lehen des Traumes, 269, 483
Lectures on Metaphysics, 479
Leg, red, as Symbol, 208, 209,
217
Légendes des siècles, 120
Legless Man, 363, 366
Leisure, 360
Le Lay, 479
Lemaître, 191, 209, 268, 481
Leonidas, 276
LÉPINE, 115, 481
Lethargy, 141
Letters persanes, 11
Letjret, 60
Leviathan as Symbol, 208
Libido, 13, 102, 103, 108, 109,
110, 112, 113, 114, 119, 141,
219, 465, 467
Lice as Svmbol, 286, 289
Liebault, 129
Life-
Reaching out towards, 159
Superabundance of, 329
as Symbol, 445
Life of Man, 454
Lind, 475
496
INDEX
Little Red Riding Hood, 257
Little Snow-White, 258
Lizard as Symbol, 184
Locke, 7, 25
Logic, 481
Logique des sentiments, 29, 31,
482
Lohengrin, 442, 443, 446
Long, 480
Lorgnette as Symbol, 399, 401
Louch, 477
Louis XVI, 39, 40, 62, 65
Louis XVIII, 21
Love, 322
Low, 482
Loyola, 116
Ludendorff, 310
Lulling, 325, 326
MacCurdy, 13, 115, 118, 481
McDougall, 89, 481
"Macmillan's Magazine," 83, 484
Madness, Fear of, 365
Maeder, 74, 119, 481
Magdalen, Mary, 329
Magnet, Affective Life as, 27
Maîtrise de soi-même par l'auto-
suggestion consciente, 129,
477
Make-up, 330
Maladaptation to Femininity,
286
Maladaptation to Reality, 306
Maladaptation to Sexuality, 288
Maladaptation to Social Life,
169, 181, 190, 195, 248, 322,
328, 331, 379-382, 388
Maladies de la personalité, 70,
483
Malaise, 355
Maltreatment of Child, 362-367
Mania, 354, 368
religious, 367-376
Maniacal Disturbances, 383-387
Manifest Content, 463
Ma Parfumée, 187
Mariage de Roland, 375
Marionette as Symbol, 280
Marriage —
Acceptance of, 168
Desire for, 296
Marriage (Cont.)
Non-Acceptance of, 393-410
Repugnance to, 164, 168
Mary Magdalen, 339
Mary, Saint, 273, see also Virgin
Mary
Masculine Protest, 267, 286, 467,
468
Masculine Rôle in Women, 171,
228, 394, 405
Masochism, 85, 313, 317, 468,
471
Masturbation, 238, 241, 242, 284,
286, 291, 309, 312, 318, 322,
327, 371, 372, 389, 392, 423
Master as Substitute for Father,
264, 440
Maternal Complex, 210, 258, 273,
311, 312, 331, 434, 468, 469,
see also Œdipus Complex
Maternal Hypnosis, 125
Maternal Indulgence, see Indul-
gence
Maternal Instinct, thwarted,
393-410
Maternity, Refusal of, 179, 289
Matière et mémoire, 59, 476
Matter and Memory, 476
Meat as Symbol, 176, 177
Medications psychologiques, 21,
128, 140, 479
Mediums, 74
Meditative Life, 265
Melancholy, 383
Melting Snow as Symbol, 340
Memory, see Reminiscence
Memory Trace, 205, 468
Mendes, 243, 251, 252
Menstruation, irregular, 267,
292, 293
Mental Aberrations in an Epi-
leptic, 367-376
Mental Disorders, 350-376
Mental Disorders of War, 481
Méditai Evoluiion in Animals^
83, 483, 484
Mer and Mere, 211
Meecier, 370, 371, 481
Merry-go-round as Symbol, 439
Metaphysico-synthesis, 111
Military Affairs as Symbol, 334,
335
INDEX
497
Mill, 25, 481
Miller, 481
Mind and Medicine, 3, 483
Minor Epilepsy, see Epilepsy-
Mirage as Symbol, 226, 228, 230
Mischbildiing, 36
Mischperson, 41
Mistakes, Dread of, 242, see also
Scrupulosity
Mixed Method, 121-143
Mneme, 435, 437
Molière, 417, 419
"Monde Médicale," 15, 482
Money as Symbol, 262
Monkey as Symbol, 249
Mon oncle et mon curé, 197
Monster as Symbol, 363, 365
Montesquieu, 11
Moral Guidance, 142
Moral Rebuff, 294, 311
Morel, 160, 481
Morton Prince, 475
Mother as Symbol, 319
Mother-Fixation, see Fixation
Motherhood —
Instinct for, see Instinct
Longing for, 292, 293, 344, 452
Refusal of, 268, 284-291
Mountain as Symbol, 391
MOITRGUE, 60, 481
Mourning as Symbol, 200
Miiller, 26
MÛNSTERBERG, 26, 481
Muscular Sense, see Kinsesthesia
Music —
Taste for, 379-382, 422
Therapeutic Value of, 382
Mute as Symbol. 454
Mysticism, 321, 332
Mystique moderne, 4, 478
Nancy School, 17, 128, 133, 136,
141
New, 14, 17, 123, 128, 134, 141
Narcissism, 186, 199, 468
Narcissus, 186, 199
Neologisms, 424
Nervous Disorder, 377
Nervous Disorders, typical, 294-
349
Nervous Excitability, 382, 417
Nervous Shock, 383
Nervous Temperament, 321
Nervous Uneasiness, 340
Nervousness, see Neurosis
Neuralgia, 54, 135, 352-361
Neurasthenia, 110, 294, 322, 417,
423, 437, 442
Neurasthenic Ideas, 340, 344
"Neurol ogisches Zentralblatt,'*
476
Neuropath, 18, 19, 105, 106, 379
potential, 295
Neuropathic Animal, Ma«i as, 19
Neurosis, 19, 50, 56, 86, 105, 110,
118, 123, 124. 126, 131, 132,
133, 148, 343, 378, 382, 469
Anxiety, 15, 298, 461
artificial Hypnotism as, 123
collective, 106
of Selt-Preservation, 118
Peace, 115
Sexual, 118
Transference, 103
War, 115, 118
Neurotic Constitution, 104, 106,
219, 475
Neiv Psychology and its Relation
to Life, 3, 484
New Psychology and the Teacher,
481
New School, 184
Nietzsche, 4, 104, 106, 112, 387
Night out, 215
Nightmare, 77, 147, 149, 150,
151, 152, 153, 157, 165, 279,
319, 352, 358, 359, 391, 392,
394, 398
Nilakantha, 433
Non-Affectivity, 60
Non-Entity, 246
Nouvelles observations sur un
cas de Somnambulisme, 74,
478
Nudity, 261
Numbers, 399, 400, 401, 402
Objectivation, 94
Obliteration of outer World, 324
Oblong Things as Symbol, 403,
452
Obsession, 362-367, 423
Obsessions et la psychasthenic,
56. 479
498
INDEX
Odieb, 125, 126, 361, 481
Œdipus Complex, 214, 219, 220,
221, 238, 240, 296, 299, 302,
303, 305, 320, 327, 390, 464,
465, 468, 469, see also Hos-
tility to Father and Ma-
ternal Complex
OflScial Psychology, see Psychol-
ogy of the Schools
Ohnet, 407
Opera-Glasses as Symbol, 292
Optimism, 269
Oraculo Manual y Arte de Pru-
dencia, 260
Orientation, 119, 459
Origin of Species, 99
Origin of Species, 477
Ostade, 336
Outcropping of the Subconscious,
61, 466, 469
Outline of Psychology, 3, 475
Over-determination, 38, 469
Law of, 52
Overwork, 294
Painting, automatic, 383
Paleontology, psychic, 100
Palmer, 476
Pansexualism, 152, 241, 266
Pantheism, 246, 321
Papers on Psychoanalysis, 115,
461, 480
Papillons, 278, 281
Paralysies hystériques, 32, 478
Paralysis, 50, 360, 449
Parentage —
common biological, of differ-
ent affective States, 87
common instinctive, of Affects,
96
Parental Complex, 124, see also
Fixation
Parish Priest as Substitute for
Father, 341, 342
Parish Priest as Symbol, 340,
341 343
Pascal, 5, 39, 40, 62
Pasha, tailed, as Symbol, 208,
209
Passionate Friendship, 196
Passivity, 397
Paternal Complex, 349, 464, 469,
see also Electra Complex
Paternal Hypnosis, 125
Paternal Injustice, 303
Path as Symbol, 269
Pathological Method, 16
Paul, E. and C, 3, 475, 480,
482, 483
Paul, N. M., 476
Paulhan, 93, 482
Payne, 482
Peace Neurosis, 115
Pent-up Action, see Action, pent-
Peopling the Unconscious with
Shadows, 3
Perception, 59, 60, 61
internal, 266
Perbelet, see Abtus-Pereelet
Persecution Complex, 351, 461,
464, 469, see also Persecu-
tion, Ideas of
Persecution, Ideas of, 284, 350,
355-361, 464
Perseus, 445
Personalism in Religion, 321
Perversion, sexual, 18, 85, 86,
323, 327
Pessimism, 245, 255
Petit Mai, see Epilepsy
Pfistee, 64, 92, 127, 128, 148,
476, 482
Phantom Ship as Symbol, 226,
228
Philippe II, 98
Philosophic Trend, 242-265
Philosophie, 483
Phobia —
see also Dread and Fear
of Buttons, 364
of confined Places, see Claus-
trophobia
of Dress-Hooks, 364
of Water, 363
Phobias, 384, 385
defined, 470
Phosphenes, 58
Pierce Clark, 352, 477
Pieron, 21, 83, 482
Pig as Symbol, 336, 337
Pilzecker, 26
Pink Paint as Symbol, 437
INDEX
499
Pins and Needles, 65
Plastic Arts, 387
Plato, 37, 103
Platonic Passions, 191
Play, 12, 73-76
and Dreaming, 12, 73-76
as Outlet for unutilised Tend-
encies, 12
in Education, 73
Theory of Dreams, 73
Play of Animals, 479
Play of Man, 479
Pleasure —
forbidden, 149, 157, 158, 165,
180, 211, 397
Principle, 106, 109
Plebs League, 3, 475
Poetic Creation, 67
Poetry, favourite, reveals Com-
plexes, 170
Pointed Hat as Symbol, 386
Pointed Objects as Symbols, 166
Pomegranate Syrup as Symbol,
438, 439
"Popular Science Magazine," 484
Porker as Symbol, 336, 337, 339
Post-chaise as Symbol, 193
Pour lire au Min, 251
Power Principle, 106, 109
Predisposition, 294, 359
Pregnancy, 48, 49, 266, 282-293
Priest, see Parish Priest
Primitive Man, 70
Prince, 475
Prince Charming, 176
Principles, guiding, of the pres-
ent Work, 10-21
Principles of Psychology, 83, 88,
479
Privy as Symbol, 256
Proczek, 191, 482
Profession, Choice of, 322
Prognathism as Symbol, 402
Progressive Tendency, see Tend-
ency
Projector as Symbol, 418, 419
Promotions, 418, 419
Prophetic Dreams, 196
Prosecution of Baudouin for
Magic, 42
Protest-
masculine, 268, 286
Protest {Cont.)
Woman's, against Man, 404
Protest against Sexuality, 399
Protest against the Environ-
ment, 351
Protest against the Father, 51,
148, 182, 186-189, 242, 299,
307, 309, 310, 326, 351, 375,
399, 405, 407
Protest against the Step-Mother,
410-420
Protest against Virility, 250
Protestantism and Catholicism,
213, 214
Provençal as Symbol, 336, 337
Prussian Discipline, 263
Pseudo-Reminiscence, 325, 326
Psychanalyse, 101, 103, 104, 112,
114, 122, 137, 477, 479
Psychanalyse au service des édu-
cateurs, 128, 476, 482
Psychanalyse et l'éducation, 9,
476
Psychanalytische Methods, 482
Psychasthenia, 321-339
"Psyche and Eros," 475
Psychoanalyse des névroses et
des psychoses, 1, 482
Psychoanalyse et mysticisme,
143, 477
Psychoanalyse und Associations-
experiment, 53, 480
Psychoanalysis —
and ordinarv Psychology, 4
and Suggestion, 14, 121-143
as Method and as Doctrine, 8
as Re-education, 13
culminates in evolutionary
Theorv of Instinct, 12, 13
defined, "470
of the Schools, 6
Prejudice against, 21
two Categories of, 1-10, 96
Psychoanalysis and esthetics,
305, 318, 476
Psychoanalysis and Compulsion
Neurosis, 71, 479
Psychoanalysis and Sociology,
100, 480
Psychoanalysis in the Service of
Education, 482
500
INDEX
Psychoanalysts —
fanatical, 3, 15
Prejudice of, against Sugges-
tion, 16, 123
Psychoanalytic Method, 482
"Psychoanalytic Review," 477,
480, 483
Psychoanalytic Theory of Dream,
11, 34, 67-82
Psychological Principles, 91, 484
Psychologie de Venfant, 73, 477
Psychologie des sentiments, 77,
483
Psychologie du raisonnement, 29,
59, 483
Psychologie française contem-
poraine, 28, 478
*-'Psychologische Abhandlungen,"
480, 484
Psychologische Typen, 109, 480
Psychology —
functional versus structural,
6, 7, 8
new, 8
normal. Study of, 20
of the Schools, 20, 29
pathological Study of, 20^
structural versus functional,
6, 7, 8
Psychology of Day-Dreams, 484
Psychology of Insanity, 350, 479
Psychology of Marriage, 3, 479
Psychology of Emotions, 483^
Psychology of the Unconscious,
70, 102, 108, 480
Psychoneuroses of War and
Peace, 115, 477
Psychoneurosis, 124
Psychosis, 110
Psychotherapy, 130
Purification, Desire for, 336, 337,
338, 339, 365
Purity, Desire for, 369
Pursuit as Symbol, 358
Pythagoras, 399, 401, 402
Quarter, Latin, 214, 216
Rabelais, 338
Rape, Ideas of, 351, 362-367
Rapport au Congrès de Londres,
21, 479
Rationalisation, 134, 235, 351,
466, 470
Real, Adaptation to, 11, 73
Reality —
Maladaptation to, 306, 321,
325
Principle, 106
Renunciation of, 327, 417
sexual, 306
Recognition, false, 326
Red Leg as Symbol, 208, 209,
217
Red Riding Hood, 257
Re-education, Psychoanalysis as,
16, 447
Régis, 1, 2, 53, 454, 479, 482
Regression, 56, 57, 62, 70, 94,
124, 159, 160, 165, 171, 172,
185, 470, see also Fixation,
infantile
Regret after sexual Act, 248
Regulus, 313, 314, 317, 344, 348
Religious and social Calling in-
spired by Cult of Father,
221-230
Religious Mania, 367-376
Reminiscence —
earliest, as Index of Character,
396
Pseudo-, 326
Rénon, 15, 482
Renunciation of Life, 246
Representation defined, 470
Repression, 3, 35, 68, 78, 79, 81,
82, 93, 118, 126, 133, 135,
138, 150, 154, 240, 267, 268,
269, 289, 309, 310, 312, 327,
356, 358, 372, 384, 402, 404,
462, 470, see also Repression
of Sexuality
of Instinct, 117, 221, 240, 265,
see also Suppression
not necessarily unwholesome,
192
of Sexuality, 240, 327, 338,
339, 390, see also Repression
of Sublimated Instinct, 255,
418
of Virility, 242-265, 320
Repression of War Experiences,
15, 483
INDEX
601
Repugnance —
for Housework, 354, 359
for Sexuality, 357, 359, see
also Sexuality, Disgust in-
spired by
for Vulgarity, 359
Eesemblance by Contrast, 151
Eesistance, 200, 470
to Sexuality, 248
to Temptation, 370
Restlessness, 340
Resurrection as Symbol, 271,
319, 320
Retreat as Symbol, 273
Return to native City as Sym-
bol, 453
Reverie, 11, 55, 61, 67, 321, 457,
see also Day-Dream
Reversal of Transference, 205
Revolt against Leaders as Sym-
bol, 373
"Revue de l'Epoque," 483
"Revue de Philosophie," 477
"Revue de Théologie et Philoso-
phie," 476
Rhine Gold, 186, 324, 435
RiBOT, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
34, 45, 52, 70, 71, 77, 90,
472, 482, 483
Richter, 257
RiGNANO, 29, 54, 59, 483
Rivers, 3, 10, 13, 70, 82, 115,
482, 483
Rivière, 478
Road as Symbol, 270, 278, 372
Rochefoucauld, 106
Rock as Symbol, 372, 391, 392
Roland un Symbole, 375, 484
Rolland, 83, 217, 483
Rolled Wall Maps as Symbols,
193, 194
Roman Road as Symbol, 277
Romanes, 83, 90, 483, 484
Rostand, 429, 430
Running away as Symbol, 395
Russell, 3, 483
Rustic Accent, see Vulgarity
Ruth, 120
Rynee, 18, 251, 483
Sadism, 85, 468, 471
Sado-Masocbism, 85
Saint Georges, 318
Saint Vitus's Dance, 212
Sâlpetrière School, 17, 121, 123,
129, 141
Salvation Army, 116
Savant as Symbol, 310
Scales as Symbol, 315
Scheenee, 269, 483
Schneitee, 70, 483
Scholastics, 19
Schoolboy's Feelings about
School, 181-186
School Essays analysed, 147,
181-186, 186-189
Schopenhauer, 117, 243, 244, 245,
246, 250, 253, 255, 256, 258,
260, 261, 262
"Scientia," 475
Scripture, 26
Scrupulosity, 231-242
Scythe, Man with, as Symbol,
184
Sea as Symbol of Introversion,
211
Seagull with clipped Wing as
Symbol, 324
Sea-sickness as Symbol, 226, 227
Search for Guide, see Guide
Seclusive Tendency, see Tend-
ency, seclusive
Sedobrol, 367
Self-Assurance, 381
Self-Examination, 296
Self-Masiery hi/ Co'uscious AutO'
suggestion, 477
Self-Mastery by Subject, the
Aim of Psychoanalysis, 421,
422, 448, 456, 458
Self-Preservation, Neurosis of,
118
Seneca, 251
Sensualists, 25
Sentiment, 54
conjugal, 98
filial, 98
Sentiment filial et la religion,
375, 476
Severity, paternal, 182, 188
Sexual Act —
childish impressions of, 390
Regret after, 248
Sexual Desire, 322, 323
502
INDEX
Sexual Instinct, see Instinct,
Sexual
Sexual Neurosis, 118
Sexual Reality, 306
Sexual Shock at Puberty, 383-
387
Sexuality, 85, 336
Acceptance of, 248
Disgust inspired by, 165, 256,
289, 357, 359, 385, 390, 397,
398
Fear of, 165, 219
Foreshadowings of, in Chil-
dren, 147, 164, 165, 166, 177
independent of reproductive
Instinct, 103
Infantile, 177, 219
initiation into, 322
latent, in Dreams, 180
moralised, 318
Protest against, 399
Refusal of, 287, 288, 295, 404
Repugnance for, 357, 359
Resistance to, 248
Sexualtrieb, 103, 109
Shame, 153, 154, 164, 234, 236,
242
Shamefacedness, 242
Shameful Act, 238
Shock, sexual, at Puberty, 383-
387
Shooting, 243
as Symbol, 248
Shunning the World, 219, 220,
325, 365, 450, 460, see aUo
Introversion
Shutters as Symbol, 274, 275
Shyness, 181-186
Siding with Mother, 326
Similarity, see Association
Law of, 25, 28, 32
Simple Life, 244
Sin, 371, 373, 375, 391
Singer at Café chantant as Sym-
bol, 441, 442
Singing as Symbol, 245
Sleeplessness, 245, 423
Slips of Memory, 50, 130, 315
Slug as Symbol, 167
Sluggishness of Intellection, 367
Smell, Delusion concerning, 351,
362-367
Smoking as symbolic Protest,
297, 299
Snake as Symbol, 228, 315, 316,
317
Snow, melting, as Symbol, 340,
345
Snowdrop, 258
Snow-\^Tiite, 258
Soap as Symbol, 180
Social Instincts, Repudiation of,
365
Socialists as Symbol, 443
Society of Jesus, 116
Socrates 429
Soldier as Symbol, 269, 270, 358
Solitude, Fear of, 362
Somnambulism, 136, 141
Song of Songs, 81
Soteriou, 422, 423, 425, 426, 427,
429, 430, 432, 434, 435
Spain as Symbol, 215
Spalding, 83, 484
Spasm of Anguish, 238, 239
Spasm of Eyelid, 295, 339-349
Spiele der Menschen, 73, 479
Spiele der Tiere, 73, 479
Spinoza, 77, 484
Spirit and Flesh, 388
Spiritualism and the New Psy-
chology, 3, 463, 477
Spit as Symbol, 291, 399
Spitteler, 261, 278, 280, 281
Spontaneity, 245, 265
Sputum as Symbol, 291, 399
Stammering, 379-387
State of Conflict, 206-218
Statues, animated, 173
Stick as Symbol, 235, 236
Stickiness as Symbol, 166, 177,
178
Stones as Symbol, 391, 446, 447
Stove-Pipe as Symbol, 49, 283
Studien iiher Hystérie, 476, 478
Studies in Dreams, 475
Studies in Word Association^
476, 480
Stylate Plants as Symbol, 385
Subconscious —
defined, 471
Rebellion of, against conscious
Control, 300
INDEX
503
Sublimated Instinct, Eepression
of, 255, 418
Sublimation, 86, 95, 106, 117,
120, 20b, 207, 255, 337, 343,
352, 367, 377-420, 422, 430,
464, 471
sesthetic, 382, 383-387, 409,
410-420
in Danger, 388-392
moral, 450
of Idea of Guide, 448-460
philosophical, 450
religious, 221-230, 388, 410-
420, 450
social, 221-230, 409, 418, 443,
/<50
vacillating, 206-218, 378, 393-
410
Substitute for Father —
Apprentice as, 265
Brother as, 316, 327, 374, 451
Chief Clerk as, 232, 382
Councillors, federal, as, 373
Federal Councillors as, 373
Head Clerk, 232, 382
Leaders as, 373
Master as, 265, 440
Parish Priest, 341
Uncle as, 299
Suffocation Dream, see Dream
Sugar-Loaf Hat as Symbol, 386
Suggester, Prejudice of, against
Psychoanalysis, 16
Suggestibility, 139, 205, 472
Suggestion, 117, 284, 296, 339,
347, 349, 354, 370, 410, 422,
450, 453, 472, see also Auto-
suggestion
Suggestion and Autosuggestion,
15, 50, 60, 61, 79, 88, 128,
132, 203, 209, 262, 467, 471,
475
Suggestion and Psychoanalysis,
15, 16, 121-143
Suggestion as Re-education, 16,
447
Suggestion —
collective, 141
general, versus particular, 134
inevitable in Psychoanalysis,
141
Suggestion {Cant.)
positive versus negative, 134
post-hypnotic, 133
Suicide, obsessive Ideas of, 298
Sununer-House as Symbol, 271,
372
Sunshine as Symbol, 227
Superiority Complex, 472
Suppression (Rivers), 82
of Instinct, 87, 116
Survey, general, 1-21
Swashbuckler as Symbol, 265
Swimming Lesson as Symbol,
381
Swinburne, 211
Symbol defined, 472
Symbol —
Absinthe as, 363, 365
Accident as, 150, 156, 157,
396, 406
Avenue as, 358
Bag as, 336
Bandaged Eyes as, 389, 391,
392
Bankruptcy, fraudulent as,
326, 327, 329
Basement Window as, 292
Basket as, 241
Bear as, 391, 392
Bear Pit as, 389, 392
Bearded Man as, 181, 182, 271
Beasts, Sticky as, 166
Bicycle as, 371
Bicycle Wheels as, 241
Black Dress as, 200
Blood as, 302, 358
Bog as, 174, 175
Bolt as, 232, 241
Brother, little as, 308, 310
Brown as, 225, 226
Brush as, 225, 226
Burglar as, 235, 236, 237, 319,
320
Burying as, 372
Bushy Trees as, 358
Butcher's Shop as, 176, 177
Café as, 175, 176, 177
Canary as, 244, 246
Caterpillar, 168
Cellar as, 181, 185
Certain Age, Woman of, 348
Chain as, 217
504
INDEX
Symbol (Conf.)
Change of Beds as, 389
Child as, 309, 318, 344
Chimney-Sweep as, 50, 63, 283
Cleaning as, 349
Cliffs as, 228
Cooperative as, 447
Crisis, mental and nervous as,
383, 385, 386
Crookedness as, 326
Cupboard as, 445
Dagger as, 357
Dancing as, 208, 209, 212, 218
Death as, 175
Defilement as, 234, 236
Deformed Creature as, 366
Demon as, 309, 310, 316, 318
Dervish, Dancing as, 217
Descent into Earth as, 172
Devil as, 208, 209, 212, 316
Dirty Food as, 409
Dirty Passages as, 457
Dirty Snow as, 341
Dirty Underlinen as, 301, 341,
349
Dirty Water as, 340, 349
Dog as, 167, 209, 212
Doing-up Room as, 348, 349
Door as, 287, 288, 289
Dragon as, 207, 208, 209
Driver as, 441, 451, 454
Drunken People as, 226, 227
Earth, Descent into, 172
Engine Headlights as, 312, 314,
317
Evening as, 278
Exhumation as, 372
Expectoration as, 291, 399
Exploring as, 395, 406
Explosion as, 180
Falling as, 234, 391
Father as, 249, 320, 373, 438
Fire as, 444
Frog as, 184, 185
German Spies as, 309, 310
Goblin as, 212
Grey Clothing as, 270, 271,
273, 454
Grimacing old Women as, 298,
299, 306
Gymnastics as, 213, 381
Symbol {Cont.)
Hat, pointed, as, 386
Hat, tall, as, 373
Headlights of Engine, 312,
314, 317
Hiding as, 237, 380
Hoarseness as, 398, 399
Inland as, 211
Italian as, 336, 337
Jumping as, 372
Justice, Statue of, 389, 392
Kaiser as, 309, 310
Knife as, 398
Lamp as, 180
Leaders, Revolt against, as,
374
Leg, red, as, 208, 209, 217
Leviathan as, 208
Lic^ as, 286, 289
Life as, 445
Lizard as, 184
Lorgnette as, 399, 401
Marionette as, 
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